Wednesday, 2 July 2008 - Associated Press TV

American actress Angelina Jolie was still in hospital in Nice, France on Wednesday, awaiting the birth of her twins.

Staff at the seafront Lenval hospital in Nice in the south of France said on Tuesday that American actress Angelina Jolie had checked in to its Santa Maria maternity clinic, to be kept under doctors’ surveillance and rest up before she gives birth.

Her partner Brad Pitt was photographed leaving the hospital on Wednesday.

Jolie has said the babies are due in August.

She and fellow actor Pitt have four children: Maddox, 6; Pax, 4; Zahara, 3; and Shiloh, 2.

The family clan has been settling into a new home in the south of France.

They recently moved into the Miraval Estate villa in the French hamlet of Correns, in the Provence region.

The town’s mayor has said that the couple has moved in, and a helicopter has been spotted taking off and landing at the site.

Correns is about 60 miles (100 kilometres) from the Mediterranean resort of Nice.

Celia Imrie, Olivier Award-winning British actress, told AP Television she thought Jolie’s choice of location was a good one.

“She has chosen the most beautiful place in the world, and if she and her babies can see this, the first thing they see when they are coming to the world, I think she has chosen beautifully,” she said.

Another French citizen said Jolie delivering her babies in Nice was flattering for French people, “It makes us very happy,” she said.

All eyes of the showbiz industry are expected to be on the hospital for the foreseeable future and the first pictures of the twins are expected to be the most expensive showbiz photo of the year.

Jolie and Pitt sold exclusive shots of their daughter Shiloh to ‘People’ magazine for a reported four (m) million US dollars, which they donated to charity.

British PR expert Max Clifford on Tuesday predicted that pictures of the newborn babies could reach at least twice that amount, saying that figures being banded about went as high as 20 (m) million dollars.

However, getting them would be much harder in France, he continued, as the Hollywood couple would be able to take advantage of the country’s strict privacy laws to keep matters in their own hands.

The hospital is named after Baron de Lenval who, in 1884, donated part of his fortune to start the hospital in memory of his only son, who died in Nice aged 11, the hospital’s Web site says.

It says the hospital was rebuilt in the 1990s.

The Hospital is a modern building on the Promenade des Anglais, where most of the rooms have sea views. A new extension to the hospital was opened in June 2008