Animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot dies at 91

Brigitte Bardot, the French 1960s sex symbol who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later a militant animal rights activist, has died at the age of 91. Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals, told that she died at her home in southern France, and would not provide a cause of death.

He said no arrangements have yet been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalised last month.  Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teen bride in the 1956 movie “And God Created Woman.” Directed by her then-husband, Roger Vadim, it triggered a scandal with scenes of the long-legged beauty dancing on tables naked. 

At the height of a cinema career that spanned some 28 films and three marriages, Bardot came to symbolise a nation bursting out of bourgeois respectability. Her tousled, blond hair, voluptuous figure and pouty irreverence made her one of France’s best-known stars.

Such was her widespread appeal that in 1969 her features were chosen to be the model for “Marianne,” the national emblem of France and the official Gallic seal. Bardot’s face appeared on statues, postage stamps and even on coins.

Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She travelled to the Arctic to blow the whistle on the slaughter of baby seals; she condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments; and she opposed sending monkeys into space.

“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told The Associated Press on her 73rd birthday in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of an animal that suffers, since it has no power, no words to defend itself.” Her activism earned her compatriots’ respect and, in 1985, she was awarded the Legion of Honour, the nation’s highest honour.

A turn to the far right

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Later, however, she fell from public grace as her animal protection diatribes took on a decidedly extremist tone and her far-right political views sounded racist as she frequently decried the influx of immigrants into France, especially Muslims. She was convicted five times in French courts of inciting racial hatred. Notably, she criticised the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep during annual religious holidays like Eid al-Adha.

Bardot’s 1992 marriage to fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale, a onetime adviser to former National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, contributed to her political shift. She described the outspoken nationalist as a “lovely, intelligent man.” In 2012, she caused controversy again when she wrote a letter in support of Marine Le Pen, the current leader of the party — now renamed National Rally — in her failed bid for the French presidency.

In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Bardot said in an interview that most actors protesting sexual harassment in the film industry were “hypocritical” and “ridiculous” because many played “the teases” with producers to land parts. She said she had never been a victim of sexual harassment and found it “charming to be told that I was beautiful or that I had a nice little ass.”  

A privileged, but difficult upbringing

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Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born Sept. 28, 1934, to a wealthy industrialist. A shy, secretive child, she studied classical ballet and was discovered by a family friend who put her on the cover of Elle magazine at age 14. Bardot once described her childhood as “difficult” and said her father was a strict disciplinarian who would sometimes punish her with a horse whip. But it was French movie producer Vadim, whom she married in 1952, who saw her potential and wrote “And God Created Woman” to showcase her provocative sensuality, an explosive cocktail of childlike innocence and raw sexuality.

The film, which portrayed Bardot as a bored newlywed who beds her brother-in-law, had a decisive influence on New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, and came to embody the hedonism and sexual freedom of the 1960s. The film was a box-office hit, and it made Bardot a superstar. Her girlish pout, tiny waist and generous bust were often more appreciated than her talent. “It’s an embarrassment to have acted so badly,” Bardot said of her early films. “I suffered a lot in the beginning. I was really treated like someone less than nothing.”

Bardot’s unabashed, off-screen love affair with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant further shocked the nation. It eradicated the boundaries between her public and private life and turned her into a hot prize for paparazzi. Bardot never adjusted to the limelight. She blamed the constant press attention for the suicide attempt that followed 10 months after the birth of her only child, Nicolas. Photographers had broken into her house only two weeks before she gave birth to snap a picture of her pregnant.

Nicolas’ father was Jacques Charrier, a handsome French actor whom she married in 1959 but who never felt comfortable in his role as Monsieur Bardot. Bardot soon gave up her son to his father, and later said she had been chronically depressed and unready for the duties of being a mother. “I was looking for roots then,” she said in an interview. “I had none to offer.” In her 1996 autobiography “Initiales B.B.,” she likened her pregnancy to “a tumour growing inside me,” and described Charrier as “temperamental and abusive.”

Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs, in 1966, but the relationship again ended in divorce three years later. Among her films were “A Parisian” (1957); “In Case of Misfortune,” in which she starred in 1958 with screen legend Jean Gabin; “The Truth” (1960); “Private Life” (1962); “A Ravishing Idiot” (1964); “Shalako” (1968); “Women” (1969); “The Bear And The Doll” (1970); “Rum Boulevard” (1971); and “Don Juan” (1973).

With the exception of 1963’s critically acclaimed “Contempt,” directed by Godard, Bardot’s films were rarely complicated by plots. Often they were vehicles to display Bardot’s curves and legs in scanty dresses or frolicking nude in the sun. “It was never a great passion of mine,” she said of filmmaking. “And it can be deadly sometimes. Marilyn (Monroe) perished because of it.” Bardot retired to her Riviera villa in St. Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after “The Woman Grabber.”      

Reinventing herself in middle age

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She emerged a decade later with a new persona: An animal rights lobbyist. Her face was wrinkled, and her voice was deep, following years of heavy smoking. She abandoned her jet-set life and sold off movie memorabilia and jewellery to create a foundation devoted exclusively to the prevention of animal cruelty. Her activism knew no borders. She urged South Korea to ban the sale of dog meat and once wrote to US President Bill Clinton asking why the US Navy recaptured two dolphins it had released into the wild.

She attacked centuries-old French and Italian sporting traditions, including the Palio, a free-for-all horse race, and campaigned on behalf of wolves, rabbits, kittens and turtle doves. By the late 1990s, Bardot was making headlines that would lose her many fans. She was convicted and fined five times between 1997 and 2008 for inciting racial hatred in incidents inspired by her anger at Muslim animal slaughtering rituals. “It’s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how slowly things move forward ... And despite all the promises that have been made to me by all different Governments put together — my distress takes over,” Bardot told the AP.

In 1997, several towns removed Bardot-inspired statues of Marianne — the bare-breasted statue representing the French Republic — after the actress voiced anti-immigrant sentiment. Also, that year, she received death threats after calling for a ban on the sale of horse meat. Bardot once said that she identified with the animals that she was trying to save. “I can understand hunted animals because of the way I was treated,” Bardot said. “What happened to me was inhuman.