Display screen siren Brigitte Bardot, whose portrayals of free-spirited ingenues made her a world intercourse image and the delight of France, and who turned her again on film stardom in 1973 to change into an animal rights activist, has died, in accordance 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 dying, and stated no preparations have but been made for funeral or memorial providers. She had been hospitalized final month after a interval of unwell well being.
Main tributes, French President Emmanuel Macron stated Bardot “embodied a lifetime of freedom” and lived a “French existence.” Jordan Bardella of the far-right Nationwide Rally celebration, which Bardot publicly supported in her later years, referred to her as a “passionate patriot” who represented “a complete 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 dying comes two months after she underwent what her employees, 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 stories 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 “critical” well being problem.
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 Lady,” 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 america, regardless of blended vital 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 known as her a “locomotive of ladies’s historical past” and “essentially the most liberated lady 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 known as her, went on to look in additional than 40 motion pictures, together with a handful of Hollywood productions, earlier than retiring from performing at age 39.
However earlier than she retreated to her property on the French Riviera to guide 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 stated, “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 motion pictures.
“I take this Legion of Honor for my battle in favor of animals,” Bardot declared.
In 1986, the previous actor based the Brigitte Bardot Basis and harnessed her fame to guide campaigns in opposition to, amongst different issues, the consuming of horse meat and the searching 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 accordance with information stories.
In her 1996 memoir, Bardot outraged many followers by declaring her help 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 expensive seven-bedroom condominium and dreaming of changing into a ballerina.
Raised by conservative Catholic dad and mom, 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 duvet of Elle journal after the editor noticed her at a prepare station.
That led to a film audition the subsequent 12 months, the place Bardot met Vadim, who was 24 on the time.
Regardless of the age distinction, they fell in love. And over her dad and mom’ 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 known 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 gained vital approval for her turns in internationally-produced motion pictures like “The Fact” (1960) and “Viva Maria!” (1965). However she largely steered away from Hollywood, though she did play herself within the 1965 comedy “Expensive Brigitte.”
Bardot didn’t suppose a lot of her personal performing.
“I began out as a awful actress and have remained one,” she reportedly stated, in accordance with The Guardian.
Bardot additionally recorded some 60 pop songs within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen 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.
Certainly one of Bardot’s best-known musical forays was a canopy of Stevie Surprise’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 Lady” when she launched into an affair together with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant.
It was certainly one of many infidelities that Bardot has admitted to over time.
Two years later, Bardot married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she had her solely baby — 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 baby 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 acquired 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, however it led to an amicable divorce.
“A 12 months with Bardot was price 10 with anybody else,” Sachs reportedly stated after the wedding was over.
Bardot, in public statements, hardly ever revisited her performing profession as soon as it was over. In a 2007 interview, she seemed to be at a loss when requested how she got here to be an icon of French cinema.
“I don’t know,” she stated. “I feel that I arrived and left on the proper time. My wild and free aspect unsettled some, and unwedged others.”
