Thieves used the closing ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival to break into the Paris apartment of Matrix Reloaded beauty Monica Bellucci, it emerged today.
As the Italian sex symbol and her actor husband Vincent Cassel appeared on TV from the south of France, the burglars got away with more than £80,000 in cash.
Jewellery and computer and video equipment worth at least double that amount were also taken, as well as Miss Bellucci’s passport – something she needed this week to travel to Hollywood.
‘It was clearly a meticulously planned burglary,’ said one of the officers investigating the burglary in Boulevard de Ménilmontant, in the French capital’s 20th arrondissement.
‘The thieves are believed to have struck just as the stars were appearing on television in Cannes on Sunday evening.
‘They entered the fourth floor apartment via a balcony, smashing a window in the process. Then they pretty much cleared the flat out of anything which was valuable and could be removed easily.
‘There have been plenty of cases of the homes of professional footballers being targeted while they are playing in high-profile matches, but this appears to be the first time that the same kind of thing has happened to actors.’
The 45-year-old former model has appeared in numerous films, including Irreversible and The Passion Of The Christ, in which she played Mary Magdalene.
She was in Cannes – where the 62nd festival ended on Sunday - promoting Marina de Van's Don't Turn Around, in which she stars alongside the French former James Bond girl Sophie Marceau.
Vincent Cassel, 42, was in Ocean’s Twelve but is best known in his native France, where he recently starred in a two-film biopic about the Paris gangster Jacques Mesrine.
The Paris crime is being investigated by the 2nd Division of the Judicial Police.
