Brigitte Bardot, the charming French star with the immaculate lips, who stunned audiences with her carefree sexuality and liberated performances in films such as, “And God Created Woman,” by Roger Vadim, has died. She was 91.
Stills from “And God Created Woman” by Roger Vadim. Iéna Productions and Union Cinématographique Lyonnaise (UCIL).
Bardot died Sunday, December 28, at her home in southern France, in her secluded farmhouse nestled on the Capon hill, known as La Garrigue, after spending decades in Saint-Tropez, surrounded by her husband, Bernard d’Ormale, a few close friends, and her beloved animals. Bardot’s death was announced by La Fondation Brigitte Bardot in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse. No cause or time of death was specified.
French President Emmanuel Macron was among the immediate mourners, calling Bardot, “a legend of the century.” He said on social media, “Her films, her voice, her dazzling glory, her initials, her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom. French existence, universal brilliance. She touched us. We mourn a legend of the century.”
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born in Paris on Sept. 28, 1934. The daughter of an engineer, she was raised in a cultured Catholic household and studied ballet at the Conservatoire de Paris. She was scouted by a family friend to model for Elle magazine, whose cover she graced in 1950 at age 15.
Bardot shot to international fame in 1956 with “And God Created Woman,” written and directed by her then-husband, Roger Vadim, and for the next two decades she embodied the idea of the archetypal “sex kitten.”
With an 18-inch waist and long, tousled blonde hair, Bardot was one of the first movie stars to appear nude on-screen.
By the time Playboy released its “100 Sexiest Stars of the Century” list in 1999, her place in the cultural imagination was already sealed. Ranked fourth—behind only Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Raquel Welch—she stood among a pantheon of women who defined allure for an era. But her impact reached far beyond magazine lists. She shaped generations of young women, setting a template for beauty and attitude that would resurface again and again, most vividly in the 1990s through figures like Pamela Anderson, among many, who carried echoes of her style into a new decade.
At the time of its release in 1956, “And God Created Woman,” pushed the boundaries of sex on the big screen. It was banned by the Vatican, and French censors insisted on cuts before allowing it to be shown in theaters at home.
Bardot swiftly became an inspiration for intellectuals and artists; not least the young John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who demanded their then girlfriends dye their hair blonde in imitation of her. The columnist Raymond Cartier wrote a lengthy article about “le cas Bardot” in Paris-Match in 1958, while Simone de Beauvoir published her famous essay Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome in 1959, framing the actor as France’s most liberated woman. In 1969, Bardot was chosen as the first real-life model for Marianne, the symbol of the French republic.
Bardot would deliver another prized showing as Camille Javal, a capricious bathing beauty, in Godard’s masterpiece “Contempt,” largely based on the filmmaker’s life and breakup with actress Anna Karina. Also starring Jack Palance and Fritz Lang, the movie begins with Bardot lying nude on a bed as her husband (Michel Piccoli) caresses and praises her body.
But “Contempt” is far from an exploitation film. Bardot’s portrayal of a woman escaping a tumultuous relationship with a screenwriter, only to find herself drawn into the orbit of a ruthless Hollywood producer, is among the finest performances of her career. The film itself is widely regarded as a landmark of the French Nouvelle Vague movement.
“I don’t know what conditions the movie was made under, nor if Bardot and Godard even got along,” French critic Jean-Louis Bory wrote. “But the result is clear: There has rarely been such a profound understanding between an actress and a director.”
The actress was busy throughout the rest of the 1960s, headlining such diverse films as “Please, Not Now!” (1961) and “Love on a Pillow” (1962), both directed by ex-husband Vadim; “A Very Private Affair” (1962), the action comedy “Viva Maria!” (1965) and the segment “William Wilson” from the omnibus movie “Spirits of the Dead” (1968), all helmed by Louis Malle; and Edward Dmytryk’s forgotten Western, “Shalako” (1968), where she played a countess opposite Sean Connery.
Bardot also recorded some 60 pop songs in the 1960s and 1970s, many of them in collaboration with French singer Serge Gainsbourg. One of Bardot’s best-known musical forays was a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” with French singer Sacha Distel.
While shooting the 1973 sex comedy “The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot,” directed by Nina Companeez, she decided to retire from acting.
Everything felt ridiculous, superfluous, absurd and useless,” she explained in her 1996 autobiography, Initiales B.B.
Speaking to a journalist while on location, she announced, “I’m done with movies. It’s over—this film is the last one. I’m sick of it.” In her memoirs, she wrote, “It felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders.” She was 39.
After making nearly 50 features, she dedicated her life to defending animal rights. Through La Fondation Brigitte Bardot, created in 1986, she took on such issues as seal hunting, poaching, the fur trade, bullfighting, the captivity of wild animals in zoos and circuses, conditions in slaughterhouses, and the farming of horse meat.
“I gave my beauty and my youth to men,” she said. “I am going to give my wisdom and experience, the best of me, to animals.”
Bardot is survived by her son, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier, born in 1960 to her then-husband, Jacques Charrier, as well as a granddaughter. Bardot publicly expressed deep ambivalence about motherhood, once describing her pregnancy as a “cancerous tumor.” Mother and son were estranged for decades, a relationship marked by her struggles with motherhood and her preference for animals. They reconciled in 2014 after she met her great-granddaughter.
When asked in 2014 by the French tabloid Gala why she had always been so fiercely independent, she answered with a laugh, “I’m the man of my life!”
Main Image: Brigitte Bardot, Nue Au Soleil—Courtesy of Universal Music Division Mercury Records
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