Brigitte Bardot’s funeral took place in France, with hundreds of people coming to pay their respects to the 1960s silver screen siren

Paris — Brigitte Bardot’s funeral took place Wednesday with a private service and public tribute in Saint-Tropez, the French Riviera resort where she lived more than half a century after retiring from cinema at the height of her fame.

Animal rights activist and far-right supporter died on December 28 at the age of 91 at home in the south of France.

President Emmanuel Macron said after his death that France was “mourning a legend”.

She died of cancer after undergoing two operations, said her husband, Bernard d’Ormale, in an interview with Paris Match magazine published Tuesday evening. “Until the end, she was aware and concerned about the fate of the animals,” he said.

Locals and admirers cheered the funeral procession as the coffin of Bardot, once one of the world’s most photographed women and a defining movie siren of the 1960s, was carried through the city’s narrow streets.

A mass began to the sound of “Ave Maria” by Maria Callas at Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption Catholic Church in the presence of Bardot’s husband, son and grandchildren, as well as guests invited by the family and the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Protection of Animals.

Hundreds of people gathered in the small town to watch the farewells on large screens installed at the port and in two squares.

After the religious service, Bardot will be buried “in the strictest privacy” in a cemetery overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, according to the Saint-Tropez town hall.

She had long considered Saint-Tropez her refuge from the fame that once made her a household name.

A public tribute will take place at a nearby site for admirers of the woman whose image once symbolized the liberation and sensuality of post-war France.

“Brigitte Bardot will forever be associated with Saint-Tropez, of which she was the most dazzling ambassador,” the town hall said last week. “Through her presence, her personality and her aura, she marked the history of our town.”

Bardot settled into her seaside villa, La Madrague, decades ago and retired from filmmaking in 1973 at the age of 39, during an international career that spanned more than two dozen films.

She later became an animal rights activist, founding and supporting a foundation dedicated to animal protection.

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

Her activism earned her the respect of her compatriots and, in 1985, she received the Legion of Honor, the highest national distinction.

Although she retired from the film industry, she remained a highly visible and often controversial public figure through decades of animal rights activism and ties to far-right politics.

She will be buried in the so-called marine cemetery, where her parents are also buried.

The cemetery, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, is also the resting place of several cultural figures, including filmmaker Roger Vadim, Bardot’s first husband, who directed her film “And God Created Woman,” a role that made her a global star.