Brigitte Bardot, icon of 1960s French cinema and animal rights activist, has died at 91

Brigitte Bardot, the French sex symbol of the 1960s who became one of the greatest cinema sirens of the 20th century, then animal rights activist and far-right supporter, has died, according to her foundation. She was 91 years old.

“The Brigitte Bardot Foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned actress and singer, who chose to abandon her prestigious career to devote her life and energy to animal welfare and to her Foundation,” the foundation said in a statement to CBS News.

The foundation’s Bruno Jacquelin told The Associated Press that the late actress died Sunday in the south of France. He gave no cause of death and said no arrangements had yet been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month.

Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teenager in the 1956 film “And God Created Woman.” Directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim, the film sparked a scandal with scenes of the leggy beauty dancing naked on tables.

At the height of a film career that spanned some 28 films and three marriages, Bardot came to symbolize a nation glowing with bourgeois respectability. Her tousled blonde hair, voluptuous figure and irreverent pout have made her one of France’s best-known stars.

Her appeal was such that in 1969, her features were chosen to serve as a model for “Marianne”, the national emblem of France and the official seal of Gaul. Bardot’s face has appeared on statues, postage stamps and even coins.

“We are mourning a legend,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on social media on Sunday.

Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She traveled to the Arctic to denounce the killing of seal pups. she condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments; and she opposed Muslim killing rituals.

“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.

A shift to the far right

Later, however, she fell out of public favor when her diatribes about animal protection took on a decidedly extremist tone. She has frequently decried the influx of immigrants into France, particularly Muslims.

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

Bardot’s marriage in 1992 to her fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale, former advisor to the leader of the National Front Jean-Marie Le Pencontributed to his political change. She described Le Pen, an outspoken nationalist with multiple racist beliefs, as a “charming and intelligent man.”

In 2012, she wrote a letter of support for the presidential candidacy of Marine Le Pen, who now leads her father’s party, the National Rally. Le Pen paid tribute on 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 “hypocrites” and “ridiculous” because many were “teasing” producers to land roles.

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

A privileged, but “difficult” education

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 to a rich industrialist. A shy and 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 whip.

But it was French producer Vadim, whom she married in 1952, who 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 presents Bardot as a bored young bride who sleeps with her brother-in-law, had a decisive influence on New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut and became the embodiment of 1960s hedonism and sexual freedom.

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

“It’s embarrassing to have done so badly,” Bardot said of his early films. “I suffered a lot at the beginning. I was really treated like someone less than nothing.”

Bardot’s unapologetic, off-screen romance with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant further shocked the nation. It eradicated the boundaries between her public and private life and made her a paparazzi star.

Bardot never adapted to being in the spotlight. She blamed the suicide attempt that followed 10 months after the birth of her only child, Nicolas, on constant press attention. Photographers broke into her house two weeks before her due date to take a photo of her pregnant.

Nicolas’s father was Jacques Charrier, a French actor whom she married in 1959 but who never felt comfortable in his role as Monsieur Bardot. Bardot quickly abandoned her son to his father and later said she suffered from chronic depression and was not ready to take on her duties as a mother.

“I was looking for roots then,” she said in an interview. “I had nothing to offer.”

In her 1996 autobiography “Initials BB,” she compared 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, but the relationship again ended in divorce three years later.

Among his films were “Un Parisien” (1957); “In Case of Misfortune,” in which she starred in 1958 with cinema legend Jean Gabin; “The Truth” (1960); “Private Life” (1962); “A Delightful Idiot” (1964); “Shalako” (1968); “Women” (1969); “The Bear and the Doll” (1970); “Boulevard du Rhum” (1971); and “Don Juan” (1973).

With the exception of the critically acclaimed “Mépris,” directed by Godard in 1963, Bardot’s films were rarely complicated by plots. Often they were vehicles for displaying Bardot in skimpy dresses or frolicking naked in the sun.

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

Bardot retired to her Riviera villa in Saint-Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after “The Woman Grabber.”

Reinventing yourself in middle age

She appeared a decade later with a new persona: an animal rights lobbyist, her face lined and her voice deep from years of heavy smoking. She abandoned her jet-setting life and sold movie memorabilia and jewelry to create a foundation devoted exclusively to preventing animal cruelty.

His activism knew no boundaries. She urged South Korea to ban the sale of dog meat and once wrote to then-President Bill Clinton asking why the U.S. Navy had taken back two dolphins it had released into the wild.

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

“It’s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how slowly things are moving… my distress takes over,” Bardot told the AP when asked about his beliefs in racial hatred and his opposition to Muslim ritual slaughter.

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

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

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