{"id":340388,"date":"2025-12-29T04:10:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T04:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/340388\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T04:10:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T04:10:09","slug":"hounded-by-photographers-for-years-bardot-identified-with-the-animals-she-later-set-out-to-save","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/340388\/","title":{"rendered":"Hounded by photographers for years, Bardot identified with the animals she later set out to save"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS (AP) \u2014 Brigitte Bardot<\/a> felt each pop of the flashbulb like the impact of a high-powered rifle bullet. And so it was, she said, that years of implacable hounding by the world\u2019s paparazzi turned a woman idolized as a sultry sex kitten into a militant animal rights crusader.<\/p>\n

Bardot, who died Sunday at age 91<\/a>, was just 22 when she rocketed to international fame with the 1956 film sensation \u201cAnd God Created Woman,\u201d a cinematic ode to her hourglass figure, sultry pout and tousled blond mane.<\/p>\n

Bardot would spend another decade and a half in the limelight \u2014 and among the paparazzi\u2019s preferred prey, including just days before she gave birth \u2014 before she retired from the cinema to devote her life to protecting animals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand wild animals, under the fire of machine guns or hunters\u2019 rifles, so well,\u201d Bardot said in a 1982 interview. The paparazzi \u201cdidn\u2019t shoot to kill, but they certainly killed something inside me by photographing me like that with their zoom lenses. They were like the arms of war, like bazookas.\u201d<\/p>\n

A sex symbol turned animal rights activist<\/p>\n

Bardot earned the title of one of the greatest sex symbols of the 20th century after her teenage breakthrough role dancing naked on tables in \u201cAnd God Created Woman,\u201d directed by the first of her four husbands, Roger Vadim.<\/p>\n

At the height of her cinema career, Bardot came to symbolize a nation bursting the seams of bourgeois respectability. Her tousled, blond mane, fabulous figure and pouty irreverence were among France\u2019s most visible natural assets. Air France, the state-run air carrier, once used Bardot in an advertising campaign.<\/p>\n

Bardot\u2019s second career as animal rights activist was equally sensational. She traveled to the Arctic to blow the whistle on the slaughter of baby seals; she condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments; and she vigorously opposed Muslim sheep-slaughtering rituals.<\/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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her activism earned her compatriots\u2019 respect and, in 1985, she was awarded the Legion of Honor. Later, however, she fell from public grace as her animal protection diatribes took on a decidedly extremist ring.<\/p>\n

She was convicted five times in French courts of inciting racial hatred, including for criticism of the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep during the annual Aid el-Kebir and Eid Al-Adha festivals.<\/p>\n

Her fourth husband was Bernard d\u2019Ormale, a one-time adviser to far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, also repeatedly convicted of racism. Bardot denied being racist, but frequently decried the influx of immigrants into France, especially Muslims.<\/p>\n

Made famous by her first husband<\/p>\n

Bardot was born Sept. 28, 1934, to a wealthy industrialist, studied classical ballet and was discovered by a family friend who put her on the cover of Elle magazine at the age of 14. She said her father was a strict disciplinarian who would sometimes \u201cpunish me with a horse whip.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was French movie producer Vadim, whom she married in 1952, who saw her potential and wrote \u201cAnd God Created Woman\u201d 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 Francois Truffaut, and it came to embody the hedonism and sexual freedom of the 1960s.<\/p>\n

The film was a box-office hit and it made Bardot a superstar. Her girlish pout, tiny waist and generous bustline were more appreciated than her talent. \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.\u201d<\/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 fair game for paparazzi who pursued her relentlessly.<\/p>\n

Hounded by paparazzi<\/p>\n

She never adjusted to the limelight and blamed the constant press attention for a suicide attempt shortly after the birth of her only child, Nicolas. Photographers broke into her house only two weeks before she gave birth to snap a picture of her pregnant.<\/p>\n

Nicolas\u2019 father was Jacques Charrier, a handsome French actor who never liked 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. \u201cI was looking for roots then,\u201d she said in an interview. \u201cI had none to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her 1996 autobiography, \u201cInitiales B.B.,\u201d she likened her pregnancy to \u201ca tumor growing inside me,\u201d and described Charrier as \u201ctemperamental and abusive.\u201d Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs, in 1966. They divorced three years later.<\/p>\n

Among her films were \u201cA Parisian\u201d (1957); \u201cIn Case of Misfortune,\u201d in which she starred in 1958 with Jean Gabin, France\u2019s Clark Gable; \u201cThe Truth\u201d (1960); \u201cPrivate Life\u201d (1961); \u201cA Ravishing Idiot\u201d (1963); \u201cA Happy Heart\u201d (1967); \u201cShalako\u201d (1968); \u201cWomen\u201d (1969); \u201cThe Bear And The Doll\u201d (1970); \u201cRum Boulevard\u201d (1971); and \u201cDon Juan\u201d (1973).<\/p>\n

The films were rarely complicated by plots and had little psychological depth. Most were vehicles to display Bardot in scanty dress 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new Bardot, revered but later reviled<\/p>\n

Bardot retired to her Riviera villa in St. Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after \u201cThe Woman Grabber.\u201d She emerged a decade later with a new persona: animal rights lobbyist, face wrinkled and voice deepened by 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. She 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

Actress Pamela Anderson, also an animal rights activist, called Bardot \u201cmy mother of the heart and my absolute idol,\u201d in an interview with the AP in 2008.<\/p>\n

In 1997, several towns removed Bardot-inspired statues of Marianne \u2014 the bare-breasted statue representing the French Republic \u2014 after she voiced anti-immigrant sentiment. Also that year, she received death threats after calling for a ban on the sale of horse meat.<\/p>\n

In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Bardot said in an interview<\/a> that 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\u201cI can understand hunted animals because of the way I was treated,\u201d she told an interviewer. \u201cWhat happened to me was inhuman. I was constantly surrounded by the world press.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Retired Associated Press correspondent Ganley contributed biographical material to this obituary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS (AP) \u2014 Brigitte Bardot felt each pop of the flashbulb like the impact of a high-powered rifle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[132082,132081,14592,6225,6485,6486,89061,1120,96,131842,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-340388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-air-france","9":"tag-animal-rights-activist","10":"tag-animal-rights","11":"tag-arts","12":"tag-arts-and-design","13":"tag-artsanddesign","14":"tag-brigitte-bardot","15":"tag-design","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-roger-vadim","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}