Anne Sinclair

Anne Sinclair
Sinclair in 2020
Born	Anne-Élise Schwartz (1948-07-15)15 July 1948 New York City,U.S.
Nationality	French American
Education	Sciences Po University of Paris
Occupation(s)	Journalist, TV interviewer
Notable credit	Two or three things from America(Political blog)
Spouses	Ivan Levaï ​ ​ (m.1976;div.1991)​ Dominique Strauss-Kahn ​ ​ (m.1991;div.2013)​
Partner	Pierre Nora(2012–present)
Children	2
Relatives	Paul Rosenberg(grandfather)

Anne Sinclair(French pronunciation:[ansɛ̃klɛːʁ];bornAnne-Élise Schwartz;15 July 1948) is aFrench-Americantelevision and radio interviewer. She hosted one of the most popular political shows for more than thirteen years onTF1,the largest European private TV channel. She isheiressto much of the fortune of her maternal grandfather, art dealerPaul Rosenberg.She covered the2008 US presidential campaignfor the French Sunday newspaperLe Journal du Dimancheand the French TV channelCanal+.She married French politicianDominique Strauss-Kahnin 1991 and divorced him in 2013 in the aftermath of theNew York v. Strauss-Kahncase. She was portrayed in the 2014 feature filmWelcome to New York.

Early life and education

Anne-Elise Schwartz was born 15 July 1948 inNew York Cityto Joseph-Robert Schwartz (changed to Sinclair in 1949) and Micheline Nanette Rosenberg. Via her mother she is the maternal granddaughter ofPaul Rosenberg,one of France's and later New York's biggestart dealers.Both of her parents were French-born Jews who had married pre-war, and who with Paul Rosenberg and his wife had fled from the Nazi persecution of Jews after the 1940Nazi invasion of France.

A few years after her birth, the family returned to France.She attended theCours Hattemer,a private school.She majored in politics atSciences Poand in law at theUniversity of Paris.

Career

Sinclair's first radio hosting job was atEurope 1,one of the leading nationwide radio networks.

Television

Between 1984 and 1997 she hosted7/7,a weekly Sunday evening news and political show onTF1that had one of the largest audiences in France. She became one of the country's best known journalists and conducted more than five hundred interviews over the course of the show's thirteen-year run.

Every Sunday at 7 pm Sinclair hosted a one-hour interview with a leading French or international personality. She interviewedFrench presidentsFrançois MitterrandandNicolas Sarkozyas well asUS presidentBill Clinton,Mikhail Gorbachev,Shimon Peres,Felipe González,German chancellorsHelmut KohlandGerhard Schröder,King Hassan IIof Morocco,Hillary Clinton,the UN Secretary General in New York during the first gulf war, andPrince Charles.

Although primarily focused on politics, her show also included celebritiesMadonna,Sharon Stone,Paul McCartney,Woody Allen,andGeorge Soros.She conducted interviews with French cultural figures such asJohnny Hallyday,Alain Delon,Yves Montand,Simone Signoret,Bernard-Henri Lévy,andElie Wiesel.

Sinclair won threeSept d'Ors,the French equivalent of theEmmy Awards.

After7/7

In 1997 she chose to leave the show to avoid conflict of interest when her husbandDominique Strauss-Kahnbecame French finance minister. She then created an Internet subsidiary company for her former employerTF1and ran it for four years before returning to journalism. In 2003 she launched a cultural radio programme calledLibre Cours(Free Rein) onFrance Inter,the French equivalent ofNPR.

She also wrote bestsellers on politics:Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'eux(Grasset, 1997) andCaméra Subjective(Grasset, 2003).

In October 2008 she launched her blogTwo or three things from Americawhich comments daily on US and international political news. It has become one of the top twelve political French blogs.In 2012 her book on her grandfather was published (21 Rue La Boétie) and she is currently heading the French edition of theHuffington Post.My Grandfather's Gallerywill be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in September 2014.

Rosenberg collection and recovery

Her grandfatherPaul Rosenberg,as well as dealing art, owned a major private collection of noted classical, impressionist and post-impressionist works. He lost many of these paintings after fleeing France for New York in 1940 with her parents, but managed to retain a number of works which he had distributed on noting the growing threat of war in the late 1930s.

As the sole heir to her parents' estate, after the death of her mother Micheline in 2007, Sinclair donated a 1918 Picasso painting of her grandmother and mother painted for Paul Rosenberg, to thePicasso Museumin Paris.She also sold an unwanted Matisse from her private collection in the same year, which raised in excess of $33M.

In October 1997, Rosenberg's heirs including Sinclair filed suit inUnited States District Court for the Western District of Washington,Seattle, to recover the paintingOdalisque(1927 or 1928) by Matisse, the first lawsuit against an American museum concerning ownership of art looted by Nazis during World War II.In 2013, they demanded that theHenie Onstad Kunstsentermuseum returnWoman in Blue in Front of Fireplace(1937), a Matisse painting that was confiscated by the Nazis in 1941 in Paris.

Personal life

Sinclair's first husband was French fellow journalistIvan Levaï,with whom she has two sons.

In 1991, she marriedDominique Strauss-Kahn,a French economist, senior politician, and the 2007-2011 managing director of theInternational Monetary Fund.She separated from Strauss-Kahn in August 2012 in the wake of ascandaldue to accusations of sexual assault and his sexual affairs with other women.His trial made public the couple's joint ownership of homes inPlace des Vosges;a $4 million townhouse inGeorgetown, Washington, D.C.;and a house within a compound inMarrakesh,Morocco.They divorced in March 2013.

Since the separation from Strauss-Kahn, Sinclair has been living with the French historianPierre Nora.

She resumed public life with a memoir of her grandfather,My Grandfather's Gallery,in 2014.

Cultural depiction

A feature filmWelcome to New Yorkdirected byAbel Ferrara(2014) was based on the Strauss-Kahn story. The film featuredGérard Depardieuas Devereaux, a character modeled on Strauss-Kahn, andJacqueline Bissetas "Simone," a character based on Sinclair. The film was "built around the Sofitel scandal and portray[ed] both characters in an unforgiving light." Sinclair said the film was "disgusting" and Strauss-Kahn's lawyer said "his client would sue the film's producers for libel".

In 2020Netflixreleased the documentary seriesRoom 2806: The Accusation,a reconstruction of the Sofitel-affair and other cases of alleged sexual assault and misconduct by Strauss-Kahn, based on interviews with persons involved. Sinclair also gave an interview, but Strauss-Kahn did not.

Selected works

• Une année particulière(an extraordinary year),1982
• Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'eux,1997
• Caméra subjective,2002
• 21, rue La Boétie,Grasset & Fasquelle, Paris, 2012,ISBN978-2-24673731-5(a book about her grandfather, arts dealer Paul Rosenberg), 2013,ISBN978-3-88897-820-3
• Chronique d'une France blessée: Juillet 2015-janvier 2017.Grasset & Fasquelle, March 2017,ISBN978-2246812234

External links

• Anne Sinclair's official political blog(in French, suspended in 2011)