PRESIDENT CHIRAC was the butt of fresh jokes yesterday after it emerged that he had tried to place one of his daughter’s friends in a leading role in the film The Da Vinci Code.

The President also requested a bigger fee for Jean Reno, the French actor who is cast as the stubborn Gallic detective Bezu Fache in the film, according to Ron Howard, the director.

“That was hilarious,” Mr Howard said. “Fortunately, the deal was already closed.”

The $125 million film version of Dan Brown’s novel, which has sold 25 million copies worldwide, opens in May with Tom Hanks playing the Harvard symbology professor at the heart of the intrigue.

Alongside him, in the part of the young cryptologist Sophie Neveu, is the 27-year-old French actress Audrey Tautou.

Tautou is known to have beaten at least a dozen other French actresses to the coveted role in what is likely to be one of next year’s biggest movies.

Mr Howard told Newsweek magazine that she had also defied the President, who wanted a family friend to play Neveu.

Mr Howard did not reveal the name of the actress touted by the French head of state. However, a French film industry source said that it was rumoured to be Sophie Marceau, 39, who was on the shortlist for The Da Vinci Code.

Although Marceau was on friendly terms with François Mitterrand, the late French Socialist President, who was said to have been besotted with her, she has since become close to M Chirac and his daughter, Claude, who acts as his communications manager. Marceau remained loyal to M Chirac during the 2002 presidential election when a host of glamorous actresses, such as Elsa Zylberstein and Virginie Ledoyen, who both also auditioned for The Da Vinci Code, backed his opponent, Lionel Jospin.

The President intervened when Mr Howard and Brian Grazer, the producer, visited Paris a year ago to seek authorisation to shoot scenes in the Louvre museum.

They were summoned to the Elysée Palace. “We thought it was going to be a five-minute thing, like a trip to the Oval Office, a photo and a handshake,” Mr Grazer said.

But they had coffee and an hour-long chat, during which M Chirac said that he would use his influence to ensure a smooth shoot at the Louvre. Then he plugged the name of the actress who he thought should play Neveu and “halfseriously” suggested a pay rise for Reno.

On both counts he failed, according to Libération newspaper, which treated the story as further evidence of the President’s notorious and often misplaced willingness to help friends. “Chirac’s pulling strings in the cinema,” it said. “Unfortunately for him, Audrey Tautou was chosen.”

Under the headline “Chirac, Veni, Vidi, Da Vinci”, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné said that the President had been rebuffed by the film makers, just as he had been rejected by the French electorate over the referendum on the European constitution.

A spokesman for the President confirmed that a meeting with Mr Howard and Mr Grazer had taken place, but denied that M Chirac had tried to influence the casting or Reno’s salary.