Brigitte Bardot, 1960s French sex symbol turned militant animal rights
activist, dies at 91
[December 29, 2025]
By THOMAS ADAMSON and ELAINE GANLEY
PARIS (AP) — 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 and far-right supporter, has died. She was 91.
Bardot died Sunday at her home in southern France, according to Bruno
Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of
animals. Speaking to The Associated Press, he gave no cause of death,
and said that no arrangements had been made for funeral or memorial
services. She had been hospitalized last month.
Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teen bride in
the 1956 movie “And God Created Woman.” Directed by 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 more than two dozen films
and three marriages, Bardot came to symbolize 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, even as she
struggled with depression.
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 coins.
‘’We are mourning a legend,'' French President Emmanuel Macron said in
an X post.
Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally
sensational. She traveled to the Arctic to blow the whistle on the
slaughter of baby seals. She also condemned the use of animals in
laboratory experiments, and she opposed Muslim slaughter rituals.
“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 Honor, the nation’s highest recognition.
Turn to the far right
Later, however, she fell from public grace as her animal protection
diatribes took on a decidedly extremist tone. She frequently decried the
influx of immigrants into France, especially Muslims.
She was convicted and fined five times in French courts of inciting
racial hatred, in incidents inspired by her opposition to the Muslim
practice of slaughtering sheep during annual religious holidays.
Bardot’s 1992 marriage to fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale, a onetime
adviser to far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen,
contributed to her political shift. She described Le Pen, an outspoken
nationalist with multiple racism convictions of his own, as a “lovely,
intelligent man.”
In 2012, she supported the presidential bid of Marine Le Pen, who now
leads her father's renamed National Rally party. Le Pen paid homage
Sunday to an “exceptional woman” who was “incredibly French.”
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,” because many played “the teases” with
producers to land parts.
She said she had never had 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.”
Privileged but ‘difficult’ upbringing
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born Sept. 28, 1934, to a wealthy
industrialist. A shy 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 that her
father was a strict disciplinarian who would sometimes punish her with a
horse whip.
Vadim, a French movie produce who she married in 1952, 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 teen who marries to escape an
orphanage and then beds her brother-in-law, had a decisive influence on
New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François 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.”
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French Actress Brigitte Bardot with a dog in the Gennevilliers,
Paris, while supporting the French animal protection society
operation, Feb. 10, 1982. (AP Photo/Duclos, File)
 Bardot’s unabashed, off-screen love
affair with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant 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
media attention for the suicide attempt that followed 10 months
after the birth of her only child, Nicolas. Photographers had broken
into her house two weeks before she gave birth to snap a picture of
her pregnant.
Nicolas’ father was Jacques Charrier, a French actor who 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 tumor growing inside me,” and described Charrier as
“temperamental and abusive.”
Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy
Gunther Sachs, in 1966, and they divorced 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 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.” As fans brought flowers to her
home Sunday, the local St. Tropez administration called for "respect
for the privacy of her family and the serenity of the places where
she lived."
Middle-aged reinvention
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 jewelry to create a foundation devoted
exclusively to the prevention of animal cruelty.
Depression sometimes dogged her, and she said that she attempted
suicide again on her 49th birthday.
Her activism knew no borders. She urged South Korea to ban the sale
of dog meat and once wrote to U.S. President Bill Clinton asking why
the U.S. 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.
“It’s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how
slowly things move forward ... my distress takes over,” Bardot told
the AP when asked about her racial hatred convictions and opposition
to Muslim ritual slaughter,
In 1997, several towns removed Bardot-inspired statues of Marianne
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.
Environmental campaigner Paul Watson, who was beaten on a seal hunt
protest in Canada alongside Bardot in 1977 and campaigned with her
for five decades, acknowledged that “many disagreed with Brigitte’s
politics or some of her views.”
“Her allegiance was not to the world of humans,” he said. “The
animals of this world lost a wonderful friend today.”
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. I was constantly
surrounded by the world press.”
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Elaine Ganley provided reporting for this story before her
retirement. Angela Charlton contributed to this report.
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