Brigitte Bardot has died aged 91.
News of the French actor and singer’s death was shared today (December 28) by The Brigitte Bardot Foundation, per French news agency AFP. No cause of death has been given.
“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,” the statement read.
Bardot shot to fame in 1956 with the film And God Created Women, written and directed by her then-husband Roger Radim.
The film, which sees Bardot take on the role of a free-spirited teenage orphan in Saint-Tropez, turned her into an international icon and grossed $4million in the United States – a record at the time for a foreign film. It was also met with controversy and banned in several states, with a district attorney in Philadelphia declaring it to be of a “lascivious, sacrilegious, obscene, indecent, or immoral nature”
She then went on to star in a series of French films in the early ’60s, including Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Oscar-nominated drama The Truth, Louis Malle’s Very Private Affair, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt. Later, she also starred in various Hollywood productions, including Viva Maria! and Shalako, a western with Sean Connery.
Bardot’s influence on pop culture has been immense, and she was heavily credited with igniting the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In 1959, philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote an essay about her titled The Lolita Syndrome, where she noted that “a saint would sell his soul to the devil merely to watch her dance.”
In 1963, she released her debut album, ‘Brigitte Bardot Sings’, which featured covers of songs by French musicians, including Serge Gainsbourg, who she met on the set of her 1959 film Voulez-vous danser avec moi?
Bardot reportedly challenged Gainsbourg to write “the most beautiful love song he could imagine” for her, which ended up being ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’. They recorded both songs together, but at the time, Bardot was married to the millionaire Gunter Sachs, who demanded that the song not be released. Gainsbourg then re-recorded it with Jane Birkin, and the original Bardot version was eventually released years later.
Bardot retired from acting in 1973, aged 39, and shifted her career focus to animal protection activism, joining protests against seal hunts in 1977 and establishing the Brigitte Bardot Foundation in 1986. “I gave my youth and beauty to men,” she said at the time. “I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals.”
In recent years, Bardot was accused of making racist comments several times and has been fined six times by French courts for “inciting racial hatred” with her writing.
In 2018, she was criticised after accusing the female stars who spoke out as part of the #MeToo movement of being “hypocritical”.
Bardot is also a close friend of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front party, who was convicted of anti-Semitism, racism, and Holocaust denial in France. His daughter, far-right politician Marine Le Pen, now runs the party.
This is a developing story.
