Brigitte Bardot, the 1960s French actress who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later an animal rights activist and right-wing extremist supporter, has died. She was 91.
According to Bruno Jacquelin of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for Animal Welfare, Bardot died on Sunday at her home in southern France.
Speaking to The Associated Press, he did not give a cause of death and said no arrangements had been made for a funeral or memorial service. She was hospitalized last month.
Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teenage bride in the 1956 film And God created woman. The film, directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim, caused a scandal with scenes showing the leggy beauty dancing naked on tables.
At the height of his cinematic career, which spanned some 28 films and three marriages, Bardot became the symbol of a nation breaking away from bourgeois respectability. Her disheveled blonde hair, voluptuous figure and pouting irreverence made her one of France’s most recognizable stars.
Such was her appeal that in 1969 her facial features were chosen as the model for Marianne, the national emblem of France and the official Gallic seal. Bardot’s face appeared on statues, stamps and even coins.
“We mourn a legend,” wrote French President Emmanuel Macron on the social media platform X on Sunday.
Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She traveled to Newfoundland to denounce the slaughter of seal pups; she condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments; and she rejected Muslim battle rituals.
“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told The Associated Press on the occasion of her 73rd birthday in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of a suffering animal, since it has no strength and no words to defend itself.”
Her commitment earned her the respect of her compatriots and in 1985 she was awarded the Legion of Honor, the country’s highest honor.
A turn all the way to the right
However, Bardot later fell from grace when her tirades about animal welfare took on a decidedly extremist tone. She frequently criticized the influx of immigrants to France, particularly Muslims.
She was convicted and fined five times in French courts for inciting racial hatred. The reason for this was their opposition to the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep on annual religious holidays.
Bardot’s marriage in 1992 to her fourth husband, Bernard d’Ormale, a former adviser to National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, contributed to her political transformation. She described Le Pen, an outspoken nationalist with several racist beliefs of his own, as a “kind, intelligent man.”
In 2012, she wrote a letter supporting the presidential candidacy of Marine Le Pen, who now leads her father’s renamed National Rally Party. Le Pen on Sunday paid tribute to an “extraordinary woman” who was “incredibly French”.
In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Bardot said in an interview that most actors who protested against sexual harassment in the film industry were “hypocritical” and “ridiculous” because many played “the tease” with producers to get roles.
She said she had never been a victim of sexual harassment and found it “charming when people told her I was beautiful or had a nice little butt.”
A privileged but “difficult” upbringing
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born on September 28, 1934, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. A shy, secretive child, she studied classical ballet and was discovered by a family friend, who put her on the cover of Elle magazine at the age of 14.
Bardot once described her childhood as “difficult” and said her father was a strict disciplinarian who sometimes punished her with a horsewhip.
But it was French film producer Vadim, whom she married in 1952, who saw her potential and wrote And God created woman to demonstrate her provocative sensuality, an explosive cocktail of childlike innocence and raw sexuality.
The film, which portrayed Bardot as a bored newlywed who sleeps with her brother-in-law, was a key influence on New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut and embodied the hedonism and sexual freedom of the 1960s.
And God created woman was a box office hit and made Bardot a superstar. Her girlish pout, narrow waist and generous breasts were often valued more than her talent.
“It’s a shame to have acted so badly,” Bardot said of her early films. “I suffered a lot in the beginning. I was really treated like someone who was less than nothing.”
Bardot’s blatant off-screen love affair with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant further shocked the nation. It blurred the lines between her public and private lives and made her a hot target for paparazzi.
Bardot never got used to the spotlight. She blamed constant press attention for the suicide attempt that followed ten months after the birth of her only child, Nicolas. Two weeks before the birth, photographers broke into her house to take a photo of her.
Nicolas’ father was Jacques Charrier, a French actor whom she married in 1959, but who never felt comfortable in his role as Monsieur Bardot. Bardot soon gave up her son to his father and later said she was chronically depressed and unready for the duties of motherhood.
“I was looking for roots back then,” she said in an interview. “I had nothing to offer.”
In her 1996 autobiography Initials BBShe compared her pregnancy to “a tumor growing inside me” and described Charrier as “moody and abusive.”
Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs, in 1966, but the relationship ended again in divorce three years later.
Her films included A Parisian (1957); In case of misfortunein which she starred alongside film legend Jean Gabin in 1958; The truth (1960); Private life (1962); An adorable idiot (1964); Shalako (1968); Women (1969); The bear and the doll (1970); Rum Boulevard (1971); And Don Juan (1973).
With the exception of the critically acclaimed 1963 contemptDirected by Godard, Bardot’s films were rarely characterized by complicated plots. They were often used to show off Bardot in skimpy clothes or naked in the sun.
“It was never my big passion,” she said of filmmaking. “And it can be fatal at times. Marilyn (Monroe) died from it.”
Bardot retired to her villa on the French Riviera in Saint-Tropez in 1973 at the age of 39 The grabber.
Reinventing yourself in middle age
A decade later, Bardot emerged with a new persona: an animal rights lobbyist, her face wrinkled and her voice deep from years of heavy smoking.
She gave up her jet-setting life and sold movie memorabilia and jewelry to create a foundation dedicated solely to preventing animal cruelty.
Her activism knew no boundaries. She called on South Korea to ban the sale of dog meat and once wrote to then-U.S. President Bill Clinton asking why the U.S. Navy had recaptured two dolphins it had released into the wild.
Bardot attacked centuries-old French and Italian sporting traditions, including the Palio, a horse race open to anyone, and championed wolves, rabbits, kittens and turtledoves.
The French film star of the 1960s traveled to Newfoundland in 1977 to personally witness the seal hunt.
“It’s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how slowly things are progressing … my despair overcomes me,” Bardot told the AP when asked about her racial hatred beliefs and opposition to the ritual killing of Muslims.
In 1997, several cities removed Marianne statues inspired by Bardot after the actress expressed anti-immigrant sentiments. Also that year, she received death threats after calling for a ban on the sale of horse meat.
Bardot once said that she identified with the animals she wanted to save.
“Because of the way I was treated, I can understand hunted animals,” Bardot said. “What happened to me was inhumane. I was constantly surrounded by the world press.”
