NEW:Rebekah Brooks says she never witnessed inappropriate dealings with police
Brooks said the message, along the lines of "keep your head up," was among a number of "indirect messages" of sympathy that top politicians sent to her.
Brooks resigned as chief executive of News International, the British arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., in July amid public outrage over claims of widespread hacking by staff at its News of the World newspaper.
The government-appointed Leveson Inquiry, set up in response to the accusations of phone hacking by the News of the World, is examining the close relationship between Britain's media and politics.
Brooks' testimony about the contacts she had with Britain's current and former prime ministers could prove embarrassing to them if it reveals too close a relationship.
Brooks said she discussed News Corp.'s controversial bid to take over British satellite broadcaster BSkyB with Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
The discussion with Cameron was not in depth, she said, and he made clear it was not his decision.
Brooks, who is known for her close ties to Murdoch, argued in favor of the bid more fully to Osborne, but he was not explicitly supportive of it, Brooks said.
The ex-editor also admitted discussing issues regarding the bid with Osborne over dinner.
Brooks said that it was "an entirely appropriate conversation" to have and that she was entitled to reflect the opposite view to what he had heard from many other news outlets.
Brooks earlier said she had an "informal role" in lobbying for News Corp.'s BSkyB takeover and acknowledged that News International's newspapers tried to counter other news outlets' opposition to the takeover.
The controversial bid was eventually abandoned amid the furor over the phone hacking scandal. An aide to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt was forced to resign last month over revelations of back-channel communications between his office and News Corp. over the bid.
An e-mail from a News Corp. employee suggested Hunt had asked him for advice on how News International was dealing with the phone hacking allegations, the inquiry heard.
Brooks said the phone hacking scandal increasingly occupied her time in her final months at News International.
But she denied being a "go-between" in an increasingly fraught relationship between Rupert Murdoch and his son James, and she dismissed the suggestion the younger Murdoch had sought to shift the blame to subordinates.
Brooks also said she never witnessed any inappropriate dealings with the police.
Brooks has been arrested twice and released on bail in connection with police investigations into the scandal. She denies any knowledge of phone hacking on her watch.
The ongoing investigations mean questioning on the issue of phone hacking is limited, so as not to prejudice them or any future trial.
Questioned over her relationship with Cameron, a family friend of her husband's, Brooks said she had met him "probably three or four times" in the five months leading up to the May 2010 election.
She said they would exchange text messages once or twice a week but denied reports that there were as many as 12 texts a day.
The messages were signed off "DC" in the main, she said. Occasionally he would sign them off " 'LOL,' lots of love, until I told him it meant 'laugh out loud,' when he didn't sign them off like that any more," she said.
Asked if she and Cameron had discussed the phone hacking allegations against News of the World, she said they had done so in very general terms.
In late 2010, they had a more detailed discussion, she said, because civil cases were in court and the issue was in the news.
Brooks was editor of News of the World in 2002 when the newspaper hacked the voice mail of a missing schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, who was later found dead. The hacking scandal led to the paper's closure in 2011. Brooks then edited The Sun, Britain's biggest-selling daily tabloid, from 2003 to 2009.
Appearing largely composed as she testified Friday, Brooks told the inquiry she had received "indirect messages" of sympathy on her resignation in July, from 10 Downing Street, 11 Downing Street, the Home Office and the Foreign Office.
A "very few" Labour politicians sent messages of commiseration, Brooks said.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair sent her a message, but his successor, Gordon Brown, did not, she said.
Blair's Labour Party benefited from the support of The Sun in three elections, but the paper switched allegiance to the Conservatives before the 2010 election in which Brown lost power.
In 2009, "we were running out of ways to support Mr. Brown's government," Brooks said, explaining what lay behind the paper's shift to Cameron in September that year.
She also said Brown had been "incredibly aggressive and very angry" in a phone call to her after The Sun published stories critical of his handling of a condolence letter to the family of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.
Brooks said Rupert Murdoch's account to her of a similar phone call he had with Brown was exactly as he had recounted it to the inquiry last month.
She was also questioned about a meeting between the Murdoch family and the Camerons in Greece in 2008.
Cameron himself has said the relationship between the media and politicians has become "too cozy." He is expected to appear before the inquiry in the coming weeks.
Brooks and her husband, Charlie Brooks, live near Cameron's constituency home and have socialized together.
She attended a private birthday party for Cameron in late 2010.
Asked Friday if there was a danger that her newspaper got too close to those in power and their "spin doctors," Rebekah Brooks said the job of journalists was to question what they were told and serve their readers.
She acknowledged becoming friendly with Blair by the end of his decade in power but said she was less friendly with Brown. She was more friends with Brown's wife, Sarah, Brooks said.
She had known Blair for more than a decade, she said, with many social and political meetings in the time he was prime minister. They also spoke on the phone and had dinners together.
Questioned about her working relationship with Murdoch, Brooks said she was close to him and believed he trusted her implicitly.
But she rejected the suggestion that politicians thought they had to go through her to get close to Murdoch.
A surprise party for her 40th birthday was held for her at Murdoch's home, she said. Blair was present at the party, but Brooks said she was not sure if Cameron had been there.
Brooks acknowledged she had made friendships during her years as a journalist, editor and chief executive but said she was always aware that she was a journalist and they were politicians, and assumed they also were.
Asked whether The Sun engendered fear in politicians, Brooks said she did not see them as people who were easily scared.
Inquiry lawyer Robert Jay and the judge overseeing it, Lord Justice Leveson, pressed Brooks over her newspaper's role in putting pressure on the Cameron government, particularly Home Secretary Theresa May, to review the case of Madeleine McCann, a child abducted in Portugal.
Brooks said The Sun had tried to persuade the government to open a review but said "threat" was too strong a word to describe its efforts.
Sky News reported Friday ahead of the hearing that Blair had sent a text message to Brooks urging her to apologize ahead of her appearance at parliamentary hearing into phone hacking in 2011.
A spokesman for Blair, Ciaran Ward, told CNN he was not able to confirm whether Blair texted Brooks at that point or not, "but if he did he didn't do it in those terms."
Testifying before that parliamentary hearing, Brooks said she was aware the newspaper used private detectives but said she had never paid a policeman or sanctioned a payment to the police.
Brooks' appearance at the Leveson Inquiry comes a day after fellow ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who became director of communications for Cameron after he quit the paper, took to the stand.
Critics have questioned Cameron's judgment in hiring Coulson in 2007 and asked why he was not subjected to more rigorous security vetting.
Coulson resigned as Cameron's spokesman in January 2011 when police opened a new investigation into the scandal. He insisted he was innocent but said he had become a distraction for the government.
Questioned Thursday, Coulson said the jailing of two News of the World employees over phone hacking in 2007 did come up in discussions with senior party members before he was offered the job.
He told the inquiry he had told them and Cameron what he has said repeatedly that he knew nothing about the practice of hacking under his leadership of the paper.
Coulson said he never witnessed a conversation that was "inappropriate" between members of the government and News International.
He dismissed as a conspiracy theory the suggestion that some kind of deal had been struck by the Conservatives on News Corp.'s takeover of BSkyB in return for Murdoch's support.
CNN's Laura Perez Maestro contributed to this report.
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