Brigitte Bardot, the French actor and singer who became an international sex symbol before turning her back on the film industry to become an animal rights activist, has died aged 91.“The Brigitte Bardot foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Madame Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned actress and singer, who chose to abandon her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare and her foundation,” it said in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse on Sunday, without specifying the time or place of death.
Bardot shot to international fame with the 1956 film And God Created Woman, written and directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim, and for the next two decades embodied the idea of the archetypal “sex kitten”. In the early 1970s, however, she announced her retirement from acting and became increasingly active politically. Her outspoken support of animal rights evolved into incendiary comments about ethnic minorities and open support for France’s far-right Front National, resulting in a string of convictions for racial hatred.
As well as for cinema audiences, Bardot swiftly became an inspiration for intellectuals and artists; not least the young John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who demanded their then-girlfriends dye their hair blond in imitation of her. Columnist Raymond Cartier wrote a lengthy article about “le cas Bardot” in Paris-Match in 1958, while Simone de Beauvoir published her famous essay Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome in 1959, framing the actor as France’s most liberated woman. In 1969, Bardot was chosen as the first real-life model for Marianne, the symbol of the French republic.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/dec/28/brigitte-bardot-french-screen-legend-and-animal-rights-activist-dies
Topic: Brigitte Bardot, French screen legend, dies aged 91 (Read 129 times)