Laurence Ferrari (born July 5, 1966) is a French journalist of Italian origin, and currently anchor of the TF1 weekday evening news. It is the most viewed news television programme in Europe.[1]
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Ferrari was born in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie[2] in 1966, as the daughter of the former mayor of the city and member of the National Assembly of France, Gratien Ferrari, and has Italian ancestry. She attended the École Française des Attachés de Presse (French School of Press Secretary) in Lyon and graduated from the Sorbonne University with a Master of 'Communication Politique and Sociale'. She is the eldest of three sisters.
She started her career in 1986 as a copywriter at the AFP and Le Figaro Magazine. She was also on the Europe 1 radio as a chronicler on health policy. She began her television career in 1994 with Michel Drucker in Studio Gabriel on France 2 and thereafter with Jean-Pierre Pernaut in "Combien ça coûte ?" on TF1. In 2001 she co-hosted the TF1 Sunday evening magazine Sept à Huit with her former husband Thomas Hugues. After her divorce, she moved in 2006 to Canal + to present the channel's weekly political magazine "Dimanche +" where she covered the French presidential election of 2007. In June 2008, she was announced as the new anchor of "Le 20 Heures de TF1", the most watched television evening news of Europe replacing Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, after twenty-one years presenting the show, and began as anchor on August 25, 2008.
Ferrari incited controversy in 2010 by wearing a veil to interview Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[3]
Laurence Ferrari has been an ambassador for SOS Children's Villages since November 2003.
In March 2007, along with other very famous personalities including journalists Claire Chazal, Marie Drucker, Tina Keiffer, Béatrice Schönberg and Mélissa Theuriau, she sponsored the La Rose Marie Claire project with UNICEF to help educate young girls.
In October 2007, Laurence Ferrari and Thomas Hugues separated on friendly terms, after 14 years of marriage (since 1993) and two children (a son and a daughter), ending the life of a media couple.
Since 2008, Laurence Ferrari has been spending her life with musician Renaud Capuçon. They were married in July 2009 in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and have one son together (born in November 2010.