Juliette Binoche speaks about her Sarko ‘shame’

French actress Juliette Binoche (left) once counted Francois Mitterand among her admirers - the late President famously approached her in a restaurant and asked her to be his mistress [For the record, Binoche declined]. So was Binoche also among the number of high-profile French women that the newly divorced President Sarkozy (right) was rumoured to have his eye on before he met model-turned-singer Carla Bruni at a dinner party?

It hardly seems likely given the actress's recent comments in interviews to promote her latest movie, a Disney romcom Dan in Real Life co-starring Steve Carrell. Binoche, who earlier this year told a Spanish website that Nicolas Sarkozy was a "new Napoleon" said this weekend that she was "ashamed" of France's new president. "I feel ashamed about Sarkozy for France," she told the Daily Mail's You magazine. "I do feel ashamed having a president like that."

Binoche, covering her hands in horror, went on: "It's a monarchy - he is a republican monarch, as I see it, making his own decisions without consulting his government."