Brigitte Bardot, Sex Symbol Turned Animal Activist, Dies At 91

Brigitte Bardot, the French actress who set the standard for a generation of female sex symbols in the 1960s and devoted her later life to animal rights, has died. She was 91.

AFP reported her death Sunday, citing a statement from her foundation that didn’t provide details.

The archetype of beauty to millions of men, Bardot spawned an era of curvy, pouting, insouciant actresses with her role as a self-assured small-town sexpot in And God Created Woman (1956). Throughout the 1970s, she was the model for “Marianne,” the female incarnation of the French republic whose profile adorns stamps and coins.

But Bardot quit making movies at age 39, and she courted controversy with comments about marginalized members of society. 

A Paris court fined her €5,000 (about $6,100 at the time) in 2004 for expressing "disgust" with France's tolerance of Muslim immigrants in her 2003 autobiography, A Cry in the Silence. The book also referred to gay people as "freaks" and said the unemployed don’t want to work.

In a 2018 interview with Paris Match, she criticized the #MeToo movement against men who abuse positions of power, saying many actresses claiming sexual harassment had willingly offered their bodies to further their careers. Unlike Catherine Deneuve, who also spoke out against the movement, Bardot didn't back down and apologize.

Her life was as tumultuous as those of women she portrayed. She was married four times and once said, "It's better to be unfaithful than to be faithful and not want to be."

Playboy magazine ranked her No. 4 on its 1999 list of the 20th century’s 100 sexiest stars, behind Raquel Welch, Jayne Mansfield and, at No. 1, Marilyn Monroe.

In 1986, she created a Paris-based foundation that supports animal refuges, sterilizes stray cats and dogs and funds projects including a horse-veterinarian center in Tunisia and a leper farm in India. The organization has also pushed for restrictions on bull fighting, whale hunting and the wearing of fur.

"I gave my youth and beauty to men," she said in a 1999 interview. "I'm now giving my wisdom and experience to animals."

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born on Sept. 28, 1934, in Paris and was already dancing and modeling at age 13. She was on the cover of Elle magazine at 15 and made her first film at 18.

The 1956 release of And God Created Woman established Bardot as an international star and Saint-Tropez as a major resort. While the film — about a woman torn between two brothers — didn’t have anything that would qualify as nudity today, its scenes of Bardot undressing and dancing barefoot to African music scandalized viewers in France and America. Bardot was married at the time to the film’s director, Roger Vadim.

Bardot went on to work with some of France’s top directors of her generation, including Henri-Georges Clouzot in La Verite ("The Truth") in 1960, Louis Malle in Vie Privee ("A Very Private Affair") in 1962, and Jean-Luc Godard in Mepris ("Contempt") in 1963. She made her last film in 1973. She also released French pop songs in the 1960s and 1970s.

Bardot wanted to marry Vadim when she was 16, but her parents forced her to wait until she turned 18. They were together for five years before divorcing. He later married actress Jane Fonda.

Bardot's second husband was actor Jacques Charrier, whom she married in 1959 after they met on the set of Babette Goes to War. They divorced after three years, during which they had Bardot's only child, Nicolas-Jacques. A 1966 marriage to Gunter Sachs, a German photographer and art collector, lasted three years. Sachs committed suicide in 2011, seeking relief from an incurable degenerative disease, according to his family.

Her 1992 marriage to Bernard d'Ormale, a member of the anti-immigrant National Front party, linked her to the far-right in France.

Bardot said in interviews she wanted to be buried at her villa in Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera. She told Paris Match in 2018 that between the villa and a nearby farm, she owned about 50 dogs, cats, donkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, geese and turtles.