French actress Brigitte Bardot dead at 91

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigitte_Bardot

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Brigitte Bardot, 1960s French sex symbol turned militant animal rights activist, dies at 91

By THOMAS ADAMSON and ELAINE GANLEY
Updated 8:32 AM EST, December 28, 2025

PARIS (AP) — Brigitte Bardot, the French 1960s sex symbol who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later a militant animal rights activist and far-right supporter, has died. She was 91.

Bardot died Sunday at her home in southern France, according to Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals. Speaking to The Associated Press, he gave no cause of death, and said that no arrangements had been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month.

Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teen bride in the 1956 movie “And God Created Woman.” Directed by then husband Roger Vadim, it triggered a scandal with scenes of the long-legged beauty dancing on tables naked.

At the height of a cinema career that spanned more than two dozen films and three marriages, Bardot came to symbolize a nation bursting out of bourgeois respectability. Her tousled, blond hair, voluptuous figure and pouty irreverence made her one of France’s best-known stars, even as she struggled with depression.

Such was her widespread appeal that in 1969 her features were chosen to be the model for “Marianne,” the national emblem of France and the official Gallic seal. Bardot’s face appeared on statues, postage stamps and coins.

‘’We are mourning a legend,’' French President Emmanuel Macron said in an X post.

Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She traveled to the Arctic to blow the whistle on the slaughter of baby seals. She also condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments, and she opposed Muslim slaughter rituals.

“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told The Associated Press on her 73rd birthday, in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of an animal that suffers, since it has no power, no words to defend itself.”

Her activism earned her compatriots’ respect and, in 1985, she was awarded the Legion of Honor, the nation’s highest recognition.

Turn to the far right
Later, however, she fell from public grace as her animal protection diatribes took on a decidedly extremist tone. She frequently decried the influx of immigrants into France, especially Muslims.

She was convicted and fined five times in French courts of inciting racial hatred, in incidents inspired by her opposition to the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep during annual religious holidays.

Bardot’s 1992 marriage to fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale, a onetime adviser to far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, contributed to her political shift. She described Le Pen, an outspoken nationalist with multiple racism convictions of his own, as a “lovely, intelligent man.”

In 2012, she supported the presidential bid of Marine Le Pen, who now leads her father’s renamed National Rally party. Le Pen paid homage Sunday to an “exceptional woman” who was “incredibly French.”

In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Bardot said in an interview that most actors protesting sexual harassment in the film industry were “hypocritical,” because many played “the teases” with producers to land parts.

She said she had never had been a victim of sexual harassment and found it “charming to be told that I was beautiful or that I had a nice little ass.

Privileged but ‘difficult’ upbringing

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born Sept. 28, 1934, to a wealthy industrialist. A shy child, she studied classical ballet and was discovered by a family friend who put her on the cover of Elle magazine at age 14.

Bardot once described her childhood as “difficult” and said that her father was a strict disciplinarian who would sometimes punish her with a horse whip.

Vadim, a French movie produce who she married in 1952, saw her potential and wrote “And God Created Woman” to showcase her provocative sensuality, an explosive cocktail of childlike innocence and raw sexuality.

The film, which portrayed Bardot as a teen who marries to escape an orphanage and then beds her brother-in-law, had a decisive influence on New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, and came to embody the hedonism and sexual freedom of the 1960s.

The film was a box-office hit, and it made Bardot a superstar. Her girlish pout, tiny waist and generous bust were often more appreciated than her talent.

“It’s an embarrassment to have acted so badly,” Bardot said of her early films. “I suffered a lot in the beginning. I was really treated like someone less than nothing.”

Bardot’s unabashed, off-screen love affair with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant eradicated the boundaries between her public and private life and turned her into a hot prize for paparazzi.

Bardot never adjusted to the limelight. She blamed the constant media attention for the suicide attempt that followed 10 months after the birth of her only child, Nicolas. Photographers had broken into her house two weeks before she gave birth to snap a picture of her pregnant.

Nicolas’ father was Jacques Charrier, a French actor who 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 had been chronically depressed and unready for the duties of being a mother.

“I was looking for roots then,” she said in an interview. “I had none to offer.”

In her 1996 autobiography “Initiales B.B.,” she likened her pregnancy to “a tumor growing inside me,” and described Charrier as “temperamental and abusive.”

Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs, in 1966, and they divorced three years later.

Among her films were “A Parisian” (1957); “In Case of Misfortune,” in which she starred in 1958 with screen legend Jean Gabin; “The Truth” (1960); “Private Life” (1962); “A Ravishing Idiot” (1964); “Shalako” (1968); “Women” (1969); “The Bear And The Doll” (1970); “Rum Boulevard” (1971); and “Don Juan” (1973).

With the exception of 1963’s critically acclaimed “Contempt,” directed by Godard, Bardot’s films were rarely complicated by plots. Often they were vehicles to display Bardot in scanty dresses or frolicking nude in the sun.

“It was never a great passion of mine,” she said of filmmaking. “And it can be deadly sometimes. Marilyn (Monroe) perished because of it.”

Bardot retired to her Riviera villa in St. Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after “The Woman Grabber.” As fans brought flowers to her home Sunday, the local St. Tropez administration called for “respect for the privacy of her family and the serenity of the places where she lived.”

Middle-aged reinvention

She emerged a decade later with a new persona: An animal rights lobbyist, her face was wrinkled and her voice was deep following years of heavy smoking. She abandoned her jet-set life and sold off movie memorabilia and jewelry to create a foundation devoted exclusively to the prevention of animal cruelty.

Depression sometimes dogged her, and she said that she attempted suicide again on her 49th birthday.

Her activism knew no borders. She urged South Korea to ban the sale of dog meat and once wrote to U.S. President Bill Clinton asking why the U.S. Navy recaptured two dolphins it had released into the wild.

She attacked centuries-old French and Italian sporting traditions including the Palio, a free-for-all horse race, and campaigned on behalf of wolves, rabbits, kittens and turtle doves.

“It’s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how slowly things move forward ... my distress takes over,” Bardot told the AP when asked about her racial hatred convictions and opposition to Muslim ritual slaughter,

In 1997, several towns removed Bardot-inspired statues of Marianne after the actress voiced anti-immigrant sentiment. Also that year, she received death threats after calling for a ban on the sale of horse meat.

Environmental campaigner Paul Watson, who was beaten on a seal hunt protest in Canada alongside Bardot in 1977 and campaigned with her for five decades, acknowledged that “many disagreed with Brigitte’s politics or some of her views.”

“Her allegiance was not to the world of humans,” he said. “The animals of this world lost a wonderful friend today.”

Bardot once said that she identified with the animals that she was trying to save.

“I can understand hunted animals, because of the way I was treated,” Bardot said. “What happened to me was inhuman. I was constantly surrounded by the world press.”

Elaine Ganley provided reporting for this story before her retirement. Angela Charlton contributed to this report.

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The infinite vertigo of Brigitte Bardot

The actress did not hide from the world after leaving the film industry; her interviews and public statements were as frequent as they were impactful

Elsa Fernández-Santos
DEC 29, 2025 - 11:34 EST

On October 1, Brigitte Bardot published Mon BBcédaire, a small white-covered book in the form of a notebook, reproduced in her own handwriting in blue ink. Amid crossed-out words, she pours out her thoughts in alphabetical form, from A for Abandonment to Z for Zoo. At 91 years old (she celebrated her birthday on September 28), the eternal muse of French cinema left a kind of final testament that summarizes her unfiltered personality. On the first page of the book are two unequivocal quotes from the BB philosophy: “Freedom is being yourself, even when it’s uncomfortable” and “Animals are the angels of this earth. They deserve our respect more than our apologies.”

While Greta Garbo retired from film and public scrutiny at 36, Bardot, who died Saturday, did the same at 39 after making The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot, a 1973 comedy about medieval love affairs. The actress literally left the set carrying a goat that was about to be slaughtered. Bardot saved the animal from the spit and never made another film. The myth was thus preserved while the woman continued on her own path.

Unlike Garbo, Bardot didn’t hide from the world, and her interviews and public statements were as frequent as they were impactful. In the late 1970s, she starred in one of the most high-profile animal rights campaigns of the time. It was in Newfoundland, Canada, where she was seen embracing a beautiful baby harp seal with white fur. The actress confronted the hunters and achieved unprecedented media coverage for such a cause.

Bardot retired from film with a certain resentment she never concealed, feeling trapped by her fame for life. Her precious freedom consisted of being able to do almost nothing. She made Saint-Tropez — where there is a hideous sculpture in her honor — her stronghold. And she only broke her seclusion to campaign for animals or for her ultraconservative ideas.

The great female myth of French cinema cannot be understood without the power of a beauty that defied all. Bardot with Picasso, Bardot with Gainsbourg, Bardot dancing, always dancing, while men of all kinds admired her, speechless. The actress astutely cultivated her wild air. With her long blonde hair framing her face, her eternal little black dress, and her ballet flats or flat shoes, watching her walk on screen with her alluring determination remains something otherworldly.

But the wild animal lived in a cage. It was Jean-Luc Godard’s film Contempt (1963) that most radically exposed the sexual objectification in which the actress had become trapped. In the famous opening sequence, with George Delerue’s music and the screen tinted red and blue, Bardot lies completely naked on the bed while Michel Piccoli, fully clothed, responds to her, section by section, confirming that yes, from head to toe, she is beautiful. The strange discomfort provoked by the sequence and, in general, by her presence in the film, perfectly encapsulates the nature of her solitary throne. In Mon BBcédaire, under the entry for the word Eternity, BB wrote: “Eternity has no beginning and no end. It is an infinite vertigo that cannot be explained.”

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https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/0 ... int-tropez

France says farewell to film star Brigitte Bardot with funeral and public homage in Saint-Tropez

The reclusive French star of the 50s and 60s was buried at her family's Mediterranean seaside grave following her death aged 91 at her home on 28 December.
Well-wishers lined the streets of Brigitte Bardot's hometown of Saint-Tropez on Wednesday for the funeral of the French screen icon as her husband revealed she had died from cancer.

Her wicker coffin was welcomed on the steps of the Notre-Dame de l'Assomption church by her long-estranged son at the start of a traditional Catholic funeral service in the morning.

The reclusive star of the 50s and 60s was buried at her family's Mediterranean seaside grave later in the day after she died aged 91 at her home on 28 December.

Hundreds of people watched proceedings on a giant screen erected on the yacht-filled port of Saint-Tropez which the star of 'And God created Woman' helped transform into a glitzy playground for the rich.



"What I remember most is what she did for animals. She had a real sensitivity, a small streak of racism too, but it wasn’t malicious, she wasn’t just that," Sandrine, a school assistant who had travelled several hours to Saint-Tropez, told the AFP news agency.

The 60-year-old from the Pyrenees mountains said she expected the public turn-out to be higher, suggesting it was because of criticism and media coverage of her political views and convictions for inciting racial hatred.

Bardot's best-known associations, from the heyday of France's New Wave film industry to animal rights campaigning and far-right politics, were all represented at the televised church service.

The son of fellow late French film star Jean-Paul Belmondo attended, as did far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, and a host of animal rights campaigners whose work Bardot helped publicise through her own foundation.

Guests filed past a photo of Bardot with one of her dogs, while a well-known image of her cuddling a baby seal was placed near the pulpit where elaborate flower wreaths were piled high.

Cancer battle
On the eve of the commemorations, Bardot's fourth husband, former far-fight political advisor Bernard d'Ormale, revealed the cause of her death.

Bardot had undergone two operations for an unspecified cancer before the disease "took her," d'Ormale told Paris Match magazine in an interview about their life together.

After being hospitalised twice in late 2025, Bardot insisted she wanted to return home to her villa known as "La Madrague", despite being in physical discomfort.

"It was uncomfortable, even when she was bedridden," added d'Ormale. "However, she remained conscious and concerned about the fate of animals until the very end."



A divisive figure
The lack of a state commemoration for Bardot, one of the country's best-known celebrities, as well as the mixed reaction to her death reflect her divisive character and much-debated legacy.

Most observers agree that she was a cinema legend who came to embody the sexual revolution of the 1960s through her acting and daring, unconventional persona.

But after she was convicted five times for racist hate speech particularly about Muslims, left-wing figures have offered only muted tributes or none at all.

President Emmanuel Macron's office offered to organise a national homage similar to one staged for fellow New Wave hero Belmondo in 2021, but the suggestion was snubbed by Bardot's family.

He did not attend on Wednesday but sent a wreath.

Bardot was laid to rest at a seaside cemetery in Saint-Tropez alongside her parents and grandparents.

In 2018, she said she wished to be buried in the garden of her home along with her pets to avoid a "crowd of idiots" trampling on the tombs of her ancestors.