The death of Brigitte Bardot, at the age of 91, on Sunday (28), revived an old controversy: the troubled relationship of the French actress with her only son, Nicolas Charrier, now 65 years old. In her autobiography “Initiales BB”, from 1995, she admits to having never had a maternal instinct, going so far as to describe pregnancy as a tumor.
Today, books like “O Mito do Instinto Materno,” by American journalist Chelsea Conaboy — launched in 2024 in Brazil by the Companhia das Letras — discuss whether the romanticization of motherhood would be a mechanism of social control. But at the time, Bardot’s revelation was shocking.
In the book, the actress spoke without mincing words about the horror that pregnancy aroused in her: “It was like a tumor that fed on me, that I carried in my swollen flesh, just waiting for the moment to get rid of it,” she wrote. She also accuses the child’s father of having assaulted her during her pregnancy.
Bardot married aspiring heartthrob Jacques Charrier in 1959 and soon became pregnant. She said she wanted to have an abortion, but her husband stopped her. Nicolas was born in January 1960. In September, the actress took barbiturates and slit her wrists. He spent a week in the hospital, between life and death. In 1963, he divorced. Nicolas stayed with his father.
Jacques and Nicolas sued the actress, claiming that the book violated their privacy. Bardot was ordered to pay the two men a total of 250,000 francs in compensation (around R$400,000 in present values).
Jacques even wrote a book, “My response to Brigitte Bardot”, to give his version of the facts. In this document, he accuses the actress’s team of having pressured her to have an abortion, because the pregnancy would harm her career, thus favoring her rival Jeanne Moreau.
“Brigitte was the breadwinner for a multitude of people working in the film industry. The arrival of a baby offered them the sad prospect of long months of unemployment,” he says in the book.
Jacques moves from theater to painting. He died last September at the age of 88. Nicolas was also an actor and visual artist. Today he is 65 years old and lives in Norway. He gave Bardot two granddaughters and three great-grandchildren – Théa and Anna. Everyone lives away from the spotlight.
After decades of turmoil, son and mother have become closer in recent years. According to famous French journalists, Nicolas regularly visited his mother in the south of France. Until Monday morning (29), he had not spoken publicly about his mother’s death.
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