THE daughter of Dominique de Villepin, the dashing but discredited French prime minister, is living under a pseudonym in New York in order to avoid accusations of using his name to boost her career as a top fashion model.

“In New York I am Marie Steiss,” said Marie de Villepin, the face of a Givenchy perfume, Ange ou Démon (Angel or Demon). “Nobody knows my real name. I did not want to suffer — or even worse, to benefit — from privileges linked to my family name. I want to succeed by myself.”

De Villepin, 20, said the name Steiss “just came to me” and that the four girls she shares a flat with in the Big Apple — a Brazilian, a Slovakian, a South African and a Canadian — “couldn’t care less” about who she is. Before becoming prime minister, her father was a career diplomat in numerous overseas postings, including India and America, where she was born.

As foreign minister he made a stirring speech at the United Nations to oppose the invasion of Iraq. “He was the voice of France at the UN,” said Paris Match magazine. “(Marie) is its perfume.”

The magazine showed her clasping a bed sheet and sitting in a red silk dress and black leather boots. The publicity for the perfume said she was selected to “reveal the darker side of women”.

De Villepin is taking night classes in “international politics” and studying to be an actress. She has already played a small role in one French film.

She got it, she said, by auditioning although the director turns out to be a friend of her father.

She said that her parents had tried to dissuade her from becoming a model but left her free to make her own choices and trusted and supported her. Arthur, her younger brother, has worked as a model as well. She also has a younger sister named Victoire.

Sometimes she gets sent to do modelling jobs in Paris and stays with the other girls in a hotel instead of joining her parents in the prime minister’s Matignon Palace. She enjoys dancing and skateboarding and, like her father, admits to a fondness for poetry.

She keeps her willowy figure by eating lots of sushi and salad and drinking little but carrot juice. According to L’Express, another French magazine, it is difficult not to notice her close resemblance to the prime minister.

“The father is everywhere, in the broad forehead, the immense, almost animal mouth . . . and in her grandiose declarations about the ‘miseries and beauties of the world’,” it said.

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