Stars rocked by the great red carpet jewel heist

The haul included necklaces, bracelets and earrings belonging to Swiss jeweller Chopard.

Raiders are believed to have bypassed the magnetic lock to a hotel bedroom and torn a safe from the wall with a crowbar.

Models Cara Delevingne and Cindy Crawford and actress Julianne Moore were loaned Chopard jewels for the festival’s opening ceremony on Wednesday.

Chopard pieces command staggering prices, with one wristwatch in white gold and diamonds costing £16million.

The jewellery is regularly loaned to the world’s most famous stars at the Oscars and at Cannes to wear on the red carpet.

Police said last night that a woman working for the firm left the jewellery in her hotel bedroom safe and went out to dinner on Thursday evening.

She returned alone some time after 3am to her second-floor suite at the Novotel Cannes Centre, which stands opposite a police station and about 15 minutes walk from the seafront.

At first, the employee did not realise she had been robbed because there was no external sign of a break-in.

Commandant Bernard Mascarelli, of the Brigade Criminelle in Nice, said: “We are examining the electronic lock to discover at what times it was opened.

“The door was not broken, the lock was not damaged. The safe has gone entirely. A tool was used to take it from the wall but we have not found the tool. We are examining CCTV from inside the hotel and also from the streets outside. There are many cameras in Cannes so we hope we can see who entered the hotel and opened the door. We do not know exactly the value of the jewellery in the safe, but this is exceptional, the jewels were for the stars.

“Numbers have been put forward that we’re still trying to verify but we are in the million dollar range.”

He added that the heist was probably not the work of a lone thief. “It seems pretty unlikely to us that it was just one person. This hotel guest was someone who was targeted because it wasn’t someone who had been seeking attention. There must have been either an inside complicity, or people who were in contact with this person and knew that the person had ­jewels.”

It is thought the female employee, who booked into her room alone, was last night being questioned by detectives.

The four-star Novotel was charging up to £400 a night during the festival but was described as “utilitarian” compared with the top hotels on the promenade.

Chopard has been maintaining a suite at the five-star Hotel Martinez but housing its staff at the Novotel.

Magistrate Jean Michelle Caillau is leading the inquiry with 10 detectives from Nice, Cannes and the nearby town of Grasse assigned to the case.

The theft took place within hours of the festival premiere of the Sofia Coppola film The Bling Ring, starring Emma Watson.

The film is based on a true story about celebrity-obsessed teenagers who waited until stars could be seen on the red carpet before breaking into their homes.

Jewel thieves are known to target the wealthy residents of Cannes and the boutique jewellers in the city.

Three years ago a gang wearing Hawaiian shirts stole jewellery worth £13million from the Cartier store in an audacious daylight raid.

In 2009, a Chopard boutique on the Place Vendome in Paris was raided and more than £6million worth of jewellery taken.

A man was eventually jailed for eight years but the jewellery was never recovered.

Chopard, based in Geneva, has been a major sponsor of the Cannes festival for 16 years and was even invited to redesign the famous Palme D’Or trophy awarded to the best director.

Boss Caroline Scheufele, 52, whose father owned the company, has loaned jewellery to Oscar winners for 10 years and is close to many Hollywood stars.

Last year the jeweller’s ambassadors for the Cannes festival included Eva Herzigova, Jessica Chastain, Reese Witherspoon and Marion Cotillard.

When Jennifer Lawrence collected her Oscar for Best Actress in March she wore diamond earrings and a platinum chain by Chopard.

Colin Firth, Helen Mirren, Hilary Swank, Kate Winslet and Penelope Cruz have all worn Chopard jewellery to the Oscars ­ceremony in Los Angeles.