Dec. 23: Singer (and First Lady of France), Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is 43 today.

Born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, in Turin, she is songwriter, singer, and a former top model. Since February 2008, she has been married to the President of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy.

She is also an heiress to the Italian tire manufacturing company CEAT, founded in the 1920s by her grandfather Virginio Bruni Tedeschi. (The company was sold in the 1970s to Pirelli.)

All that and she's beautiful. I guess this proves that life can be unfair - except maybe in the world of music. Politics, fame and fortunes aside, the question here is can she sing?

Carla grew up in France from age seven and attended boarding school in Switzerland. She went to Paris to study art and architecture, but left school at 19 to become a model. By the 1990s, Bruni was among the 20 highest-paid fashion models, earning $7.5 million a year. While modeling, Bruni dated Eric Clapton, then Mick Jagger.

In 1997, Bruni quit the world of fashion to devote herself to music. She sent her lyrics to Julien Clerc in 1999, based on which he composed seven tracks on his 2000 album Si j'étais elle.

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Now she's going to be an actress. in a television interview broadcast on November 23, 2009, Bruni revealed that she had accepted a role in a forthcoming Woody Allen film.

In 2002, her debut album Quelqu'un m'a dit, produced by ex-lover Louis Bertignac, was released in Europe with success in Francophone countries. Three songs from the album appear in Hans Canosa's 2005 American film Conversations with Other Women, the song "Le Plus Beau du quartier" was used in H&M's Christmas 2006 commercial, and the title track was featured in the 2003 movie Le Divorce and in the 2009 movie (500) Days of Summer.

In 2005, she performed a duet with Louis Bertignac, singing "Les Frôleuses" on his new album. In 2006, Bruni recorded "Those Little Things,"  an English-language translation of the Serge Gainsbourg song "Ces petits riens" for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited.

Her second album, No Promises containing poems by William Butler Yeats, Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, Dorothy Parker, Walter de la Mare, and Christina Rosetti, set to music, was released in January 2007.

She continued recording after her marriage. She released her third album Comme si de rien n'était in July 2008. All the songs were written by her except for her rendition of "You Belong to Me" and another song featuring Michel Houellebecq's poem "La Possibilité d'une île."

Bruni sang for Nelson Mandela's 91st birthday on July 18, 2009 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. In September 2009, she recorded a duet with Harry Connick, Jr. for the French edition of his album Your Songs. The album was released in France on October 26, 2009.

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