{"id":373385,"date":"2025-12-28T16:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T16:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/373385\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T16:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T16:28:09","slug":"brigitte-bardot-icon-of-french-cinema-turned-animal-rights-activist-dead-at-91","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/373385\/","title":{"rendered":"Brigitte Bardot, icon of French cinema turned animal rights activist, dead at 91"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brigitte Bardot, the 1960s French actress who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later an animal rights activist and far-right supporter, has died. She was 91.<\/p>\n

Bardot died on Sunday at her home in southern France, according to Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals.<\/p>\n

Speaking to The Associated Press, he gave no cause of death and said no arrangements have yet been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month.<\/p>\n

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

At the height of a cinema career that spanned some 28 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\u2019s best-known stars.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s face appeared on statues, postage stamps and even coins.<\/p>\n

\u2018\u2019We are mourning a legend,\u2019’ French President Emmanuel Macron wrote Sunday on social media platform X.<\/p>\n

Bardot\u2019s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She travelled to Newfoundland<\/a> to blow the whistle on the slaughter of baby seals; she condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments; and she opposed Muslim slaughter rituals.<\/p>\n

\"ABardot, centre, is surrounded by animal rights protesters during a demonstration against transporting live animals, in Brussels on Feb. 20, 1995. (Jacques Collet\/The Associated Press)<\/p>\n

\u201cMan is an insatiable predator,\u201d Bardot told The Associated Press on her 73rd birthday, in 2007. \u201cI don\u2019t 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.”<\/p>\n

Her activism earned her compatriots\u2019 respect, and in 1985, she was awarded the Legion of Honour, the nation\u2019s highest recognition.<\/p>\n

A turn to the far right<\/p>\n

Later, however, Bardot 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Bardot\u2019s 1992 marriage to fourth husband Bernard d\u2019Ormale, a onetime adviser to 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 \u201clovely, intelligent man.”<\/p>\n

In 2012, she wrote a letter in support of the presidential bid of Marine Le Pen, who now leads her father\u2019s renamed National Rally party. Le Pen paid homage on Sunday to an \u201cexceptional woman\u201d who was \u201cincredibly French.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ABardot acknowledges applause prior to a news conference in Paris on Sept. 28, 2006. (Remy de la Mauviniere\/The Associated Press)<\/p>\n

In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement,\u00a0Bardot said in an interview<\/a>\u00a0that most actors protesting sexual harassment in the film industry were \u201chypocritical\u201d and \u201cridiculous\u201d because many played \u201cthe teases\u201d with producers to land parts.<\/p>\n

She said she had never had been a victim of sexual harassment and found it \u201ccharming to be told that I was beautiful or that I had a nice little ass.”<\/p>\n

A privileged but \u2018difficult\u2019 upbringing<\/p>\n

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

Bardot once described her childhood as \u201cdifficult\u201d and said her father was a strict disciplinarian who would sometimes punish her with a horse whip.<\/p>\n

But it was French movie 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.<\/p>\n

The film, which portrayed Bardot as a bored newlywed who beds her brother-in-law, had a decisive influence on New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, and it came to embody the hedonism and sexual freedom of the 1960s.<\/p>\n

\"TwoBardot, left, attends a news conference in Mexico City on Jan. 18, 1965. Seated next to her is producer Louis Malle and at right is French actress Jeanne Moreau. (The Associated Press)<\/p>\n

And God Created Woman 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an embarrassment to have acted so badly,\u201d Bardot said of her early films. \u201cI suffered a lot in the beginning. I was really treated like someone less than nothing.”<\/p>\n

Bardot\u2019s unabashed, off-screen love affair with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant further shocked the nation. It eradicated the boundaries between her public and private life and turned her into a hot prize for paparazzi.<\/p>\n

Bardot never adjusted to the limelight. She blamed the constant press 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.<\/p>\n

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 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was looking for roots then,\u201d she said in an interview. \u201cI had none to offer.”<\/p>\n

In her 1996 autobiography Initiales B.B., she likened her pregnancy to \u201ca tumour growing inside me,\u201d and described Charrier as \u201ctemperamental and abusive.”<\/p>\n

Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs, in 1966, but the relationship again ended in divorce three years later.<\/p>\n

\"ABardot, right, is shown with actor Jack Palance during the filming of the movie Le Mepris (a.k.a. Contempt), directed by Jean-Luc Godard, in Rome in May 1963. (The Associated Press\/File Photo)<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

With the exception of 1963\u2019s critically acclaimed Contempt, directed by Godard, Bardot\u2019s films were rarely complicated by plots. Often they were vehicles to display Bardot in scanty dresses or frolicking nude in the sun.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was never a great passion of mine,\u201d she said of filmmaking. \u201cAnd it can be deadly sometimes. Marilyn [Monroe] perished because of it.”<\/p>\n

Bardot retired to her French Riviera villa in Saint-Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after The Woman Grabber.<\/p>\n

Reinventing herself in middle age<\/p>\n

Bardot emerged a decade later with a new persona: an animal rights lobbyist, whose face was wrinkled and her voice was deep following years of heavy smoking.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Her activism knew no borders. She urged South Korea to ban the sale of dog meat and once wrote to then-U.S. president Bill Clinton asking why the U.S. navy recaptured two dolphins it had released into the wild.<\/p>\n

Bardot 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.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Bardot’s opposition to seal hunt criticized for discounting Indigenous ways of life:\"\"<\/p>\n

Brigitte Bardot visits Newfoundland seal hunt<\/p>\n

The French film star of the 1960s travels to Newfoundland in 1977 to witness the seal hunt in person.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how slowly things move forward … my distress takes over,\u201d Bardot told the AP when asked about her racial hatred convictions and opposition to Muslim ritual slaughter.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Bardot once said that she identified with the animals that she was trying to save.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can understand hunted animals because of the way I was treated,\u201d Bardot said. \u201cWhat happened to me was inhuman. I was constantly surrounded by the world press.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brigitte Bardot, the 1960s French actress who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-373385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}