French cinema star Brigitte Bardot dies at 91

The Paris-born actress, singer, and model starred in 47 movies before retiring from the big screen

French cinema icon Brigitte Bardot has died at the age of 91, her foundation said on Sunday. She was a 1950s and 1960s sex symbol, later becoming a fervent animal rights activist and outspoken critic of mass immigration and what she called the “Islamisation” of France.

Bardot was reportedly hospitalized earlier this year, and her foundation denied rumors of her death in November. On Sunday, it announced she had died, although no cause of death was disclosed.

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“The Brigitte Bardot Foundation would like to salute the memory of an exceptional woman who gave everything and gave up everything for a more animal-friendly world.”

Bardot starred in such movies as ‘Contempt’, ‘A Very Private Affair’, ‘And God Created Woman’, ‘Viva Maria!’, among others. She was affectionately known as BB in France.

She walked away from the spotlight in 1973 and devoted much of the rest of her life to animal rights activism, founding the Brigitte Bardot Foundation in 1986.

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Her harsh opposition to the Muslim religious practice of ritually slaughtering sheep during annual religious holidays led to multiple French court convictions for inciting racial hatred.

In her 2003 book ‘A Scream in the Silence’, Bardot criticized what she called the “Islamization of France,” and the country’s immigration policy.

Jordan Bardella, the head of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally mourned her on X as a fervent French patriot and a woman of heart, conviction and character. Bardot’s husband Bernard d’Ormale, her fourth, is a former adviser to the political party.