Brigitte Bardot, Icon and Provocateur, Dead at 91

Some months before her death, Brigitte Bardot gave an interview with BFMTV. Eleven years had passed since she’d last appeared on screen, the journalist Steven Bellery remarked. Why step in front of a camera now? Bardot, small but stately on a sofa in her home in Saint-Tropez, replied: “I’m going to war.”

Bardot, who leapt to global stardom as a nubile rebel in the 1956 film And God Created Woman, wanted the French government to outlaw hunting wild animals with hounds, which she called a “horror.” It was a move characteristic of the latter half of the actress’s life, during which the plight of animals–from the stray dogs of Bucharest to Arctic seal pups–was often foremost in her mind. Her foundation, Fondation Brigitte Bardot, has run shelters, sterilization and adoption campaigns, and conservation efforts around the world since 1986.

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But Bardot, whose death at 91 was announced by her foundation, was also a vocal proponent of far-right politics in France. She decried Muslim immigration in public letters and in books, and she was repeatedly found guilty of provoking racial hatred.

Decades after her films first provoked scandal and fascination, she remained a study in contrasts. 

Career as a bombshell

Born in 1934, Brigitte Bardot was the eldest daughter of a wealthy Parisian family. She studied ballet and became a model as a young teenager, eventually making the acquaintance of filmmaker Roger Vadim, who would become her first husband. 

At the age of 18, she starred in his And God Created Woman, which became a global blockbuster and scandal magnet, and created her reputation as a sex symbol. She appeared in numerous films over the next two decades, including Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave film Contempt. She was famous for her languid stare and full-lipped smile, and for embodying a new kind of female sexual emancipation.

Second act as an activist

Bardot’s last film was The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot (1973). She publicly announced she was retiring from acting. She turned her attention to activism on behalf of animals, and, in 1977, was photographed lying on the ice in Canada with a harp seal pup as part of a Greenpeace campaign against the seal hunt. 

Such stunts were far from the only work she undertook. Her foundation helped fund a plan with the mayor of Bucharest in Romania to sterilize hundreds of thousands of stray dogs in the city, as an alternative to extermination. 

Far-right symbol

In 1992, Bardot married Bernard d’Ormale, a businessman and adviser to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front. She began to make waves with public letters and statements against various groups in society, with few subjects evading her contempt; targets ranged from homosexuals to #MeToo activists to kosher butchers. Sued by civil rights groups, she was eventually convicted five times for inciting racial hatred.

After Bardot’s death was announced, politician Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, wrote on X: “France has lost an exceptional woman, remarkable for her talent, courage, frankness, and beauty.” Also on X, the president of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, wrote that Bardot “embodied a life of freedom…She touched us. We mourn a legend of the century.”

In her interview with BFMTV, which can be seen on YouTube, Bardot lingers on the abolition of hunting with hounds. 

“Do you want the abolition to be your legacy?” the journalist asks. “What we remember about you?” “Oh! No,” she says, and smiles coyly. “Oh no, there are many things that should be remembered about me.” She chuckles and looks down, as if reflecting on her life. Then she begins to speak again of the suffering of animals.