French actress and singer Brigitte Bardot, a female icon of the 1950s and 1960s and animal rights activist, has died at the age of 91. The information was made public by the Brigitte Bardot Foundation this Sunday the 28th.
“The Brigitte Bardot Foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Brigitte Bardot, 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,” indicates the press release, without specifying the date or place of death.
Bardot retired more than 50 years ago, leaving behind around fifty films.
Born September 28, 1934 in Paris, the daughter of an industrialist, Brigitte Bardot began her career as a model at the age of 15, with her brown hair already bleached. This look made her one of the most famous “blondes” of the 20th century, along with Marilyn Monroe.
Acting career
Bardot made her first films at the age of 18, but gained international attention with her role in And God Created a Woman (1956), directed by her husband Roger Vadim, whom she had married in 1952. In the film, she played a young woman who deliberately uses her erotic charms to seduce men. Thus was born the myth of Bardot. In the United States, the film was considered too explicit for cinema. The cinema owners who showed it were even arrested.
This did not diminish the success of the film or of Bardot, quite the contrary. In the years that followed, she established herself as a femme fatale. He appeared in more than 40 films, including La Vérité (1960), by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Le Mépris (1963), by Jean-Luc Godard, and Viva Maria! (1965), by Louis Malle.
Singer template icon
Bardot also recorded numerous songs and pop songs in the 1960s and 1970s, notably with Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. As a model, she was a muse to designers at major fashion houses, including Dior, Balmain and Pierre Cardin.
Thanks to his hedonistic lifestyle, which he also adopted off-screen, he became an icon of the sexual revolution of the time. After divorcing Vadim in 1957, she had several legendary affairs, notably with her co-star, actor Jean-Louis Trintignant. The two men form a dream couple in French cinema, both on and off screen.
After her breakup with Trintignant, Bardot began relationships also scrutinized by the press, such as with the singer Gilbert Bécaud. In 1966, she had a brief marriage to German-Swiss industrial heir Gunter Sachs, who, with his extroverted lifestyle, was considered at the time the epitome of the playboy.
Described as the “locomotive of women’s history”, Bardot was celebrated by feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir in a 1959 essay titled Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome as the freest woman in post-war French history.
Bardot ended her acting career in 1973, but remained a star throughout her life.
Fight for animal welfare
Media attention to Bardot’s private life changed somewhat as she became increasingly devoted to activism. Beginning in the early 1960s, she used her worldwide fame to advocate for better rights and greater protection for animals, a cause that would become her life’s cause.
From the beginning, she advocated for the introduction of captive bolt guns in slaughterhouses to ensure that the slaughter of animals was as painless as possible. From 1976 he joined a global campaign against seal hunting. In 1986, he founded the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, which defends animal welfare around the world.
Flirting with the ultra-right
In 2021, Brigitte Bardot had to pay a fine of 20 thousand euros for racist remarks against the inhabitants of the island of Reunion, in the Indian Ocean, after writing a letter to the government of the territory criticizing alleged mistreatment of animals.
But this was not the first time Bardot was involved in controversies of this type. She was fined several times for inciting hatred against Muslims. In 2004, a French court found her guilty of inciting racial hatred for a book in which she criticized Muslims for killing animals and claimed that France was being subverted.
Since supporting conservative candidate Valéry Giscard d’Estaing against socialist François Mitterrand in 1974, Bardot has shifted to the right several times. One example is his flirtation with the right-wing populist party Frente Nacional, currently Reunion Nacional.
In an interview with Paris Match magazine in 2014, she hailed Marine Le Pen, then leader of the National Front, as “the Joan of Arc of the 21st century” who would “save France”.
Controversies
Bardot has also spoken out on gender issues several times. After some rather ambivalent statements about the gay scene, she denied being homophobic, citing having many gay friends. At the same time, he blames skyrocketing health care costs on the number of sex reassignment operations.
During the #MeToo debate over sexual harassment in the film industry, she claimed that many actresses “taunt” producers to get a role. “And then they say they were harassed, so we talk about them.”
Despite her many controversial statements and positions, Brigitte Bardot remained a national icon until the end of her life. It is no coincidence that “BB” has repeatedly served as a model for busts of the French national figure Marianne.
*Material currently being updated
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