Cotillard won her Oscar for playing legendary French singer Edith Piaf

"I think we're lied to about a lot of things," she said during a French TV interview broadcast in 2006, which has resurfaced on the internet.

Cotillard, 32, won her Oscar for La Vie en Rose, for playing singer Edith Piaf.

Her lawyer, Vincent Toledano, told news agency AFP she had "never intended to contest nor question the attacks".

He added she "regrets the way old remarks have been taken out of context".

Transcript

In the interview, given to French TV network Paris Premiere, Cotillard appears to suggest the attacks on the World Trade Center were staged to avoid the expense of refurbishing them.

"We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes, are they burned?" she asks. "There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burned for 24 hours.

"It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [in New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed."

Moon landing questioned

The Twin Towers, she claims, were a "money sucker" that would have cost much more to modernise than to destroy.

The actress goes on to cast doubt on the Moon landing of 1969. "Did a man really walk on the moon?" she asks.

"I saw plenty of documentaries on it and I really wondered. In any case I don't believe all they tell me."

A transcript of Cotillard's interview has been posted on France's Marianne2 website.

The actress, who has won numberous awards for her performance as Piaf, is due to begin filming gangster movie Public Enemies with actor Johnny Depp shortly.