Brigitte Bardot, the French actor who embodied the liberated woman of the 1960s before abandoning cinema for animal welfare activism, has died aged 91.
The Brigitte Bardot Foundation announced her death on Sunday without specifying the time or place. “The Brigitte Bardot foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Madame Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned actress and singer, who chose to abandon her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare and her foundation,” the statement said, according to Agence France-Presse.
Bardot shot to international fame with the 1956 film And God Created Woman, directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim. The film, in which she played an uninhibited teenager in Saint-Tropez, became a huge hit in France and internationally, catapulting her into the front rank of French cinema.
For two decades, she embodied the archetypal “sex kitten” of European cinema, appearing in high-profile films including Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Oscar-nominated The Truth, Louis Malle’s Very Private Affair opposite Marcello Mastroianni, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt.
From stardom to activism
Born in Paris in 1934, Bardot grew up in a prosperous Catholic family and trained as a ballet dancer at the prestigious Conservatoire de Paris. She found work as a model whilst still a teenager, appearing on the cover of Elle in 1950 aged 15.
Her modelling work led to film roles, and at one audition she met Vadim, whom she married in 1952 after turning 18. She played Dirk Bogarde’s love interest in Doctor at Sea, before And God Created Woman made her an international icon.
Bardot inspired artists and intellectuals throughout the 1960s. The young John Lennon and Paul McCartney reportedly demanded their girlfriends dye their hair blonde in imitation of her. Simone de Beauvoir published a famous 1959 essay, Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome, framing the actor as France’s most liberated woman. In 1969, she became the first real-life model for Marianne, the symbol of the French republic.
She also pursued a music career, recording the original version of Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus, which he had written for her during an extramarital affair. After her then-husband Gunter Sachs discovered the affair, Bardot asked Gainsbourg not to release it. He later re-recorded it with Jane Birkin to huge commercial success.
However, Bardot found fame increasingly oppressive. “The madness which surrounded me always seemed unreal. I was never really prepared for the life of a star,” she told the Guardian in 1996.
She retired from acting in 1973 aged 39, after making the historical romance The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot. Her focus shifted entirely to animal protection, joining protests against seal hunts in 1977 and establishing the Brigitte Bardot Foundation in 1986.
Controversial political stance
Bardot’s animal rights activism evolved into increasingly controversial political positions. She sent protest letters to world leaders over issues including dog extermination in Romania, dolphin killing in the Faroe Islands and cat slaughter in Australia, alongside regular commentary on religious animal slaughter.
Her 2003 book A Cry in the Silence espoused rightwing politics and criticised gay men and lesbians, teachers and what she termed the “Islamisation of French society”, resulting in a conviction for inciting racial hatred.
Bardot openly supported France’s Front National, now renamed National Rally. She told the Guardian she shared party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen’s views “completely” on immigration. In 2006, she wrote to then-interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy claiming France’s Muslim population was “destroying our country by imposing its acts”.
She was married four times: to Vadim (1952-1957), Jacques Charrier (1959-1962, with whom she had a son Nicholas in 1960), Sachs (1966-1969), and former Le Pen adviser Bernard d’Ormale, whom she married in 1992. She also had high-profile relationships with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Gainsbourg.
Bardot’s legacy remains complex. She revolutionised cinema’s portrayal of female sexuality and became an icon of 1960s liberation, whilst her later activism for animal welfare influenced conservation movements. However, her embrace of far-right politics and convictions for racial hatred complicated her cultural standing in France.
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Photo of Brigittte Bardot in ‘Le Mepris’ (1963)
