Diving Bell star joins outcry against Sarko

Last month the French actress Juliette Binoche revealed the shame she felt at having Nicolas Sarkozy as her country's head of state. Now Mathieu Almaric (pictured), star of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the baddie in the forthcoming Bond movie Quantum of Solace, has added his own protest against the president. "It's not a joke," he told the Observer. "It's very tough, very, very tough and it's only been one year that he's in power. It's finished. I mean, the belief people had in him is just dead. I have a lot of difficulty now to find that exotic or funny or ridiculous. I'm disgusted."

Sarkozy's popularity began to wane last autumn around the time his first wife Cecilia left him. Things got worse when he began a very public romance with the model-turned-singer Carla Bruni. Aides at the Elysee Palace had hoped that his marriage to Carla would see an upswing in his ratings in time for his first anniversary as president on May 6 – but it hasn't happened. A French opinion poll conducted at the end of April found 64 per cent had a negative opinion of the president – a record low since such surveys began in 1981.