Display screen siren Brigitte Bardot, whose portrayals of free-spirited ingenues made her a world intercourse image and the pleasure of France, and who turned her again on film stardom in 1973 to grow to be an animal rights activist, has died, in keeping with French media and Related Press.
She was 91.
Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Basis for the safety of animals, informed The Related Press that she died at her house in southern France. He didn’t present a reason for loss of life, and mentioned no preparations have but been made for funeral or memorial providers. She had been hospitalized final month after a interval of in poor health well being.
Main tributes, French President Emmanuel Macron mentioned Bardot “embodied a lifetime of freedom” and lived a “French existence.” Jordan Bardella of the far-right Nationwide Rally get together, which Bardot publicly supported in her later years, referred to her as a “passionate patriot” who represented “a whole period of French historical past.”
Bardot’s basis paid tribute to her legacy on animal rights, from travelling to the Arctic ice floes to assist child seals, to lobbying for animal welfare laws and securing convictions for perpetrators of animal abuse.
Her loss of life comes two months after she underwent what her workers, in a press release to AFP, described as “minor surgical procedure” for an unspecified ailment in October 2025.
On the time, Bardot shortly swatted away false on-line reviews that she had died.
“I don’t know which imbecile launched this faux information concerning my disappearance, however know that I’m high quality and don’t have any intention of bowing out,” she had posted on X.
However a month later, in November 2025, Bardot was hospitalized once more for what French information retailers described a “severe” well being subject.
Born a brunette on Sept. 28, 1934, in Paris, Bardot grew to become world well-known after she dyed her hair blonde and starred within the 1956 film “And God Created Girl,” which was directed by her first husband, Roger Vadim.
The provocative French melodrama a couple of voluptuous teenager who scandalizes Saint-Tropez was a field workplace smash each overseas and in the US, regardless of combined crucial evaluations and condemnation by watchdog teams like The Nationwide Legion of Decency.
Dubbed a “intercourse kitten” by British movie producer Tony Tenser, Bardot broke by means of because the so-called sexual revolution was underway, girls have been embracing contraception, and plenty of moviegoers have been trying to find racier fare.
French feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir referred to as her a “locomotive of ladies’s historical past” and “probably the most liberated girl in post-war France” in a 1959 essay titled “Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome.”
French President Charles de Gaulle declared that Bardot was a “French export as vital as Renault vehicles.”
In the meantime, BB, because the French affectionately referred to as her, went on to seem in additional than 40 films, together with a handful of Hollywood productions, earlier than retiring from appearing at age 39.
However earlier than she retreated to her property on the French Riviera to steer a much more reclusive life, Bardot bared all of it within the pages of Playboy to mark her fortieth birthday.
And shortly she was championing a brand new trigger.
“I gave my youth and my magnificence to males,” Bardot later mentioned, “however I give my knowledge and expertise to animals.”
Bardot appealed to the Danish queen to halt the mass killings of dolphins within the Faroe Islands.
Bardot grew to become a hero to animal rights activists. And in 1985, when France awarded her the Legion of Honor medal, Bardot insisted it was for her work to save lots of animals — not for her films.
“I take this Legion of Honor for my struggle in favor of animals,” Bardot declared.
In 1986, the previous actor based the Brigitte Bardot Basis and harnessed her fame to steer campaigns in opposition to, amongst different issues, the consuming of horse meat and the looking of turtle doves in France.
In her later years, Bardot gravitated to far-right politics and was fined repeatedly for inciting racial hatred in opposition to Muslim immigrants to France, in keeping with information reviews.
In her 1996 memoir, Bardot outraged many followers by declaring her assist for far-right Nationwide Entrance chief Jean-Marie Le Pen. Her fourth husband, businessman Bernard d’Ormale, had been an adviser to Le Pen.
The Nazis have been occupying Paris when Bardot was rising up in an opulent seven-bedroom house and dreaming of changing into a ballerina.
Raised by conservative Catholic mother and father, Bardot chafed in opposition to her upbringing. However she was allowed to take dance lessons. And in 1950 she landed, at age 15, on the quilt of Elle journal after the editor noticed her at a prepare station.
That led to a film audition the following yr, the place Bardot met Vadim, who was 24 on the time.
Regardless of the age distinction, they fell in love. And over her mother and father’ objections, Bardot and Vadim married on Dec. 21, 1952, three months after her 18th birthday.
Bardot launched into a film profession that, early on, included a small half within the 1953 Hollywood manufacturing “Act of Love,” starring Kirk Douglas.
Three years later, whereas taking pictures an Italian film referred to as “Mio figlio Nerone,” Bardot on the urging of the director dyed her hair blonde and turbocharged her profession.
Bardot was field workplace gold and even received crucial popularity of her turns in internationally-produced films like “The Reality” (1960) and “Viva Maria!” (1965). However she largely steered away from Hollywood, though she did play herself within the 1965 comedy “Pricey Brigitte.”
Bardot didn’t assume a lot of her personal appearing.
“I began out as a awful actress and have remained one,” she reportedly mentioned, in keeping with The Guardian.
Bardot additionally recorded some 60 pop songs within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, lots of them in collaboration with French singer Serge Gainsbourg, with whom she had an affair whereas married to her third husband, German millionaire Gunter Sachs.
One in every of Bardot’s best-known musical forays was a canopy of Stevie Marvel’s “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” with French singer Sacha Distel.
By her personal admission, Bardot’s private life was tempestuous.
Her marriage to Vadim started falling aside on the set of “And God Created Girl” when she launched into an affair along with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant.
It was one in every of many infidelities that Bardot has admitted to through the years.
Two years later, Bardot married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she had her solely youngster — a son named Nicolas-Jacques Charrier, who was born in January 1960.
Bardot, in her memoir, wrote that she was “not made to be a mom.” She wrote that her unborn youngster was like a “cancerous tumor” that she tried to take away by punching herself within the abdomen.
When that marriage broke up after three years, Charrier bought custody of their son.
Father and son later sued Bardot for the “hurtful remarks” within the memoir and have been awarded $36,200 in damages.
Bardot and her son, who lives in Norway, later reconciled. And she or he met her grandchildren and great-granddaughter.
Her three-year marriage to Sachs in 1966 was additionally marked by a number of infidelities, nevertheless it led to an amicable divorce.
“A yr with Bardot was value 10 with anybody else,” Sachs reportedly mentioned after the wedding was over.
Bardot, in public statements, hardly ever revisited her appearing profession as soon as it was over. In a 2007 interview, she gave the impression to be at a loss when requested how she got here to be an icon of French cinema.
“I don’t know,” she mentioned. “I believe that I arrived and left on the proper time. My wild and free facet unsettled some, and unwedged others.”
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