What France’s celebrities don’t understand about Le Pen voters

Since 2012, the French actor Omar Sy has lived in Los Angeles. One of his houses has included a sprawling villa with five bedrooms, six bathrooms, an outdoor pool and a jacuzzi. With luxury like that perhaps it’s not surprising that Sy – known to British audiences for his role in X-Men, Jurassic World and Lupin – rarely returns to the Republic. But he’s in town this week to promote a book, and has been using his time in television studios to warn the good folk of France about the danger of voting for the ‘extreme right’.

First, however, as befits a millionaire actor who lives in a very big house in La La land, Sy began his tirade by lamenting the erosion of the Republic’s principles of liberty, egality and fraternity. And why has this happened? Because of ‘people who are spitting out their hatred and trying to revive a France of the past with very set ideas’.