Brigitte Bardot, the pouty, tousle-haired French actress who redefined mid-20th-century movie sex symbolism in films beginning with And God Created Woman, then gave up acting at 39 to devote her life to the welfare of animals, has died. She was 91.
Fondation Brigitte Bardot, the foundation she established in Paris, announced her death in a statement on Sunday without saying when she died or giving other details.
Bardot was 23 when And God Created Woman, a box-office flop in France in 1956, opened in the US the next year and made her an international star. Bosley Crowther, writing in The New York Times, called her “undeniably a creation of superlative craftsmanship” and "a phenomenon you have to see to believe". Like many critics, he was unimpressed by the film itself.
Bardot’s film persona was distinctive, compared with other movie sex symbols of the time, not only for her ripe youthfulness but also for her unapologetic carnal appetite. Her director was her husband, Roger Vadim, and although they soon divorced, he continued to shape her public image, directing her in four more movies over the next two decades.
Few of Bardot’s movies were serious cinematic undertakings, and she later told a French newspaper that she considered La Vérité, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Oscar-nominated 1960 crime drama, the only good film she ever made.
Nicknamed B.B. (pronounced in French much like the word for baby), she was best known for light comedies like The Bride Is Much Too Beautiful (1956), Babette Goes to War (1959) and The Vixen (1969), but she did work with some of France’s most respected directors.
Although she made several films in English, Bardot never worked in the US. The closest she came to Hollywood roles were small parts, when she was still unknown, in Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy (1956), a Warner Bros picture filmed in Italy, and Act of Love (1953), a Kirk Douglas film shot in France and directed by Anatole Litvak. Shalako, a 1968 western in which she was cast opposite Sean Connery, was a British-German production filmed in Spain and England.
At the height of her popularity, almost everything about Bardot was copied — her deliberately messy hairstyle, her heavy eye makeup and her fashion choices, which included tight knit tops; skinny pants; gingham; and flounced skirts showing off bare, sun-tanned legs. In 1969, she became the first celebrity to be used as the model for Marianne, a traditional symbol of the French Republic that adorns town halls across the country.
In a statement on Sunday, France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, said, “Her films, her voice, her dazzling fame, her initials, her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne — Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom.”
When Bardot announced her retirement from films in 1973, she had already begun her work on behalf of animal rights and welfare (although she had told an American reporter in 1965, “I adore furs”). But it was only in 1986, a year after she was made a chevalier of France’s Legion of Honor, that she created the Fondation Brigitte Bardot, which has waged battles against wolf hunting, bullfighting, vivisection and the consumption of horse meat.
“I gave my beauty and my youth to men,” she was quoted as saying at the time, “and now I am giving my wisdom and experience, the best of me, to animals.”
Bardot often spoke with bitterness about her movie career and about fame, which she said had stolen her privacy and happiness. In 1996, she summed up her point of view to a reporter for The Guardian.
“With me, life is made up only of the best and the worst, of love and hate,” she said. “Everything that happened to me was excessive.”
New York Times News Service