French actor, singer and animal rights campaigner Brigitte Bardot has died at the aged of 91.
Bardot’s screen career began in the 1950’s and she was considered a screen goddess in the 1960s. Later in life she retired from acting and became a prominent animal rights activist.
Her passing at the age of 91 was announced by her foundation. They said Bardot had passed away on Sunday but no cause of death was shared.
“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,” they said.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to one of France’s most famous citizens.
“With her films, her voice, her dazzling glory, her initials (BB), her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, and her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom,” he wrote on social media platform X, referring to the female symbol of the French Republic in art.
As a child Bardot studied ballet, but she switched to acting and began appearing in films in 1950s. Her big breakthrough came in 1956’s And God Created Woman.
Through out her career she appeared in many French films including The Truth (1960) Le Mépris (1963), and Viva Maria! (1965). She worked with promintent directors including Louis Malle, Jean Luc-Godard and Roger Vadim. She also found success as a singer, releasing several albums.
In 1971 she retired from acting and turned her attention to animal rights activism.
Bardot was married four times, and had several notable relationships. At 18 she married director Roger Vadim, they separated four years later after she began a relationship with her And God Created Woman co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant. Vadim would go on to marry several prominent actors including Jane Fonda, but he always remained close to Bardot.
Her second husband was actor Jacques Charrier, their marriage lasted from 1958 until 1962. Together they had a child. During the union Bardot had an affair with actor Glenn Ford, before leaving her husband for another actor Sami Frey.
In 1966 she married millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs, but they separated two years later and divorced the following year. During her marriage to Sachs we had an affair with singer Serge Gainsbourg. Later she would date Hollywood star Warren Beatty.
Bardot found love again and married for a fourth time to Bernard d’Ormale. They wed in 1992 and remained together for the remainder of her life.
In her 2003 A Scream in Silence Bardot was critical of effeminate gay men, describing them as men who “jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air and with their little castrato voices moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through”, and said some contemporary homosexuals behave like “fairground freaks”.
Responding the controversy around her comments, Bardot wrote a letter to a French gay magazine saying she was not homophobic and most of her friends were gay men. “Apart from my husband—who maybe will cross over one day as well—I am entirely surrounded by homos. For years, they have been my support, my friends, my adopted children, my confidants.” she claimed.
Her book also had comments about her beliefs on racial mixing, women in politics, and her criticism of Islam. In 2004 a court found her guilty of inciting racial hatred. It was the fourth time she’d been fined having previously made comments about not wanting people from other nations settling France.
In 2008 was fined once again over comments she made in a letter sent to future French President Nicholas Sarkozy, at the time he was the Interior Minister. In later years she was accused of making insensitive comments about Jewish people, and publicly criticised actors who were speaking up about sexual harassment in the screen industry.
Bardot voiced support for far right politics, and her husband Bernard d’Ormale was previously an adviser to Jean-Marie Pen, and she endorsed his daughter Marine Le Pen in the 2012 and 2017 French Presidential elections.
