'Dark Knight Rises' Star Marion Cotillard on Gun Violence: 'It's a Vicious Circle'

Marion Cotillard still is visibly shaken when she recalls the moment she first heard about the Aurora, Colo., shootings.

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The date was July 20, 2012, and what was meant to be a career high for the Oscar winner -- starring in a new Christopher Nolan-directed Batman epic -- instantly was overshadowed by an unthinkable tragedy as news quickly spread that a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado left 12 moviegoers dead at the hands of a crazed shooter.

Those wounds have barely begun to heal as the country now copes with an even more unbelievable and senseless horror: the murder of 27 people, 20 of them children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

The Hollywood Reporter asked Cotillard about her thoughts on the Colorado shooting in a conversation with the actress last month.

"I’ve never felt good about guns. Especially when it’s out of control," the Rust and Bone star told THR.

"Sadly, I guess, it's in America’s culture," Cotillard added. "And I believe it’s going to be hard to change that because some people can’t be secure without it. It’s creating at the same time this insecurity. It’s a vicious circle."

Cotillard is shooting Blood Ties, directed by French movie star Guillaume Canet, her partner and father of her 1-year-old son. The film is set in the world of organized crime in 1970s Brooklyn.