Catching Up with Carla Bruni
AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program. Now you've seen her on the catwalk as a supermodel. You've seen her on the arm of some of the world's most famous rock stars. You've seen on her state visits as the first lady of France. And now a side of Carla Bruni that you may not have seen recently, the singer and artist. Since leaving the Elysee Palace last year, Bruni has released a new album. It's called "Little French Songs." And I spoke to her earlier as she sings her way back into civilian life.</s>AMANPOUR: Carla Bruni, welcome to the program.</s>CARLA BRUNI, SINGER AND FORMER FRENCH FIRST LADY: Thank you very much.</s>AMANPOUR: Good to see you. Tell me how relieved you are to no longer be first lady and be back in your own comfort zone.</s>BRUNI: Well, I wouldn't say relieved. I mean, it's very peaceful and very nice not to have so much pressure. But I wasn't having the pressure. It was my husband. Yes, I am relieved in a personal way, you know, because you're always afraid someone might get so tired or he'll, you know, from this kind of position --</s>AMANPOUR: And to be able to perform again.</s>BRUNI: -- and -- yes. That's, you know, be able to perform live, be able to go on tour. That's really nice.</s>AMANPOUR: So you're here promoting your new album, "Little French Songs," and I wonder if you'll play just a little bit of any of the songs that you want for us.</s>BRUNI: Yes. With pleasure. So I'll play you a little minute of -- you know, the album is called "Little French Songs," and it's full of little French songs. And this one is called "Little French Song."</s>AMANPOUR: Appropriately named.</s>BRUNI: It's not French. It's not English. It's Frenglish.</s>AMANPOUR: Frenglish. Go for it.</s>BRUNI: Right, yes. (</s>MUSIC PLAYING, "A LITTLE FRENCH SONG")  BRUNI: So, you know, it means when you -- when life is not so easy, try for a little France song, of course (inaudible), dancing, you know, they're not -- but they're nostalgic.</s>AMANPOUR: Sort of folk.</s>BRUNI: -- and they bring you to Paris.</s>AMANPOUR: Well, there you go. Let me ask you because, obviously, everybody knows that you had friendships with a lot of top musicians, people like Mick Jagger, people like Eric Clapton, all these -- who are your influences? Did they encourage you to sing? What -- how did you start singing?</s>BRUNI: No, I started singing on my own, you know, but you know, as a child really. But my greatest influence would be folk singers, you know, songwriters, classic songwriters, you know, like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, you know --</s>BRUNI: -- you know, or also the old jazz women, you know, like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald. Those are the people that made me want to sing.</s>AMANPOUR: The sort of intimate folk songs.</s>BRUNI: Yes, intimate and simple, yes.</s>AMANPOUR: Your life was anything but simple when you became first lady. You went from superstar model, very famous, but into a whole different sort of fish tank when you became the wife of a president. You got married -- your first marriage --</s>BRUNI: Late marriage.</s>AMANPOUR: -- late marriage and your first marriage, even though you had a son before. But describe the marriage and why you did it just before you went to England and you met the Queen. And that was an amazing trip.</s>BRUNI: It was an amazing trip. It was more comfortable for us to be married. But we would have been married anyway. You know, of course we were -- while this was a French republic, so you know, being like a non-official position, I was coming from show business, you know. And I just wanted to reassure the people and show them that I wasn't just hanging out and dating the president, you know. So we got married. But to tell you the truth, I would have married that man in any situation. And just at first as we did it anyway.</s>AMANPOUR: Well, let me ask you about that because you know, people know the public persona of Nicolas Sarkozy. He's rather brash. He's not very friendly to the press.</s>AMANPOUR: Maybe you can change that for us. People didn't think it was a -- well, there were a lot of people who thought that this wasn't going to last, that it wouldn't last the end of the presidency, that you'd bolt afterwards or he'd bolt afterwards. You two are very different. And yet you've defined the odds and you're together and you have a young daughter. What is it about the relationship?</s>BRUNI: Oh, well, we're -- formally (ph) in love at the first minute and it's very hard when you have a public life to -- it's very hard for the person that sees you from outside and doesn't know you to know what you really are and what really happens. So you know, in between us, we're very similar, you know. We're like the song, you know, he says potato and I say potato; he says tomato and I say tomato. So we're matching and we're very lucky that we meet one another, because that's his third marriage. And my first marriage, but you know, I was 40 when I met him and so how can I say -- I think at that time of life, you wouldn't let such a love pass by without catching it.</s>AMANPOUR: You describe a very warm husband, somebody who's very attentive. So what do you make of the fact that he's being called, you know, elderly abuse, this whole case with Liliane Bettencourt, that he's accused of sort of trying to prey on her for campaign funds?</s>BRUNI: But I don't know how I would describe, but I'm sure that everything about the truth will come out soon.</s>AMANPOUR: Fair enough.</s>BRUNI: Yes.</s>AMANPOUR: And you became a slightly older mother; you were 43 when you were pregnant.</s>BRUNI: Definitely not a young --</s>AMANPOUR: What was that like?</s>BRUNI: Tiring.</s>BRUNI: But lovely. Like a miracle, you know, kind of a miracle and having a healthy little girl, such luck. Well, you know, motherhood is tiring even for a young woman. You know, but when you're older, of course, it's like. And but maybe appreciated more. Maybe you give it more.</s>AMANPOUR: And you say a miracle. I just want to go right back into some of the people who you met as first lady. And one of them, of course, was the miracle of South Africa with Nelson Mandela, who as we know, is ailing in hospital. What was it like meeting him, you and your husband did. What did you get out of that? What was that moment like?</s>BRUNI: It was one of the most incredible moments of my life, I must say. We were on a South African state visit and we went to visit his prison before we went to meet him. And when I saw Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela is a very grand and tall and, you know, sort of a very, very important (ph) man, you know. And when I saw him, sitting in that chair, I couldn't believe he had spent the 20 years in that small, tiny prison, because you know, we saw the prison before we saw him. And I was wondering when I was sitting in front of him how he could actually lay down. He probably never laid down, not even once. He could never sleep laying down on the floor. There was no room, hardly enough room for me to lay down. And so I was wondering -- sometimes, you meet some sort of people -- he came out after 20 years of jail forgiving the people that put him in jail, feeling sorry for them. That's what he said. So sometimes in life, you get to meet this kind of person very rarely that makes worth life.</s>AMANPOUR: Do you think you will ever go back into that kind of public life? Do you think your husband will run again for the presidency?</s>BRUNI: Oh, I don't know. It's really not very much depending on me.</s>AMANPOUR: Can you imagine being first lady again?</s>BRUNI: Well, I don't imagine many things, you know. I don't project myself so far. That's his situation, his story. That's his life, not mine. But he's so supporting with me, that's supportive, that I am going to sing with him.</s>AMANPOUR: You're going to stand by because we're come back after a break with a special song for a very special person, Nelson Mandela. And also President Obama, as we know, is in Africa. He's in Senegal today. He paid his own tribute to South Africa's first black president and he'll be there tomorrow. We'll be right back with Carla Bruni.