"B.B.," stands for Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot, a French campaigner for animal rights, singer, model, and actor. For her roles involving hedonistic lives, she became one of the most famous symbols of the sexual revolution. Even though she retired from acting in 1973, she remains a cultural icon to this day. She has been in 47 films and several musicals, and she has recorded over 60 songs. She received the Legion of Honour in 1985.
Ballet was Bardot's lifelong ambition when she was a small kid in Paris. She started acting in 1952 and became famous worldwide in 1957 for her role in And God Created Woman. That film drew the admiration of many French intellectuals and earned her the nickname "sex kitten." In her 1959 essay "The Lolita Syndrome," philosopher Simone de Beauvoir called her a "locomotive of women's history" and used existentialist ideas to crown her France's most free woman. For her role in 1961's The Truth, she received the David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Actress. Bardot appeared in a later part in Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mepris. Maria, viva!her feature film, directed by Louis Malle, which earned her a British Academy Film Award nomination for Best Foreign Actress. According to French President Charles de Gaulle, "The French export as important as Renault cars" was the description of Bardot.
After Bardot retired from performing in 1973, she created the Brigitte Bardot Foundation and committed her life to animal welfare. Aside from the two fines she received for insults in public, her outspokenness, powerful personality, and speeches on animal protection have made her famous. Her controversial statements against immigration and Islam in France, as well as her disparaging word for Reunionese residents, "savages," caused political division and led to six penalties for promoting racial hate as of November 2021. Her husband, Bernard d'Ormale, aided the far-right French lawmaker Jean-Marie Le Pen in her political career. Among Bardot's many honors and medals include membership on the UN Environment Programme's Global 500 Roll of Honour and recognition from UNESCO and PETA. Ranked #2 on the 2011 '50 Most Beautiful Women In Film' list by Los Angeles Times Magazine.
Prior eras
Bardot was born to Louis Bardot and Anne-Marie Mucel in the 15th arrondissement of Paris on September 28, 1934. Born in Ligny-en-Barrois, Bardot's father was an engineer and the proprietor of many businesses in Paris. Her mother was the daughter of the director of an insurance company. Similarly to her father before him, she grew up in a strict Catholic family. She was born with amblyopia, a disorder that hindered the vision of her left eye, when she was a toddler. Her younger sister's name is Mijanou Bardot.
Bardot had an affluent upbringing in the luxurious seven-bedroom 16th arrondissement residence of her affluent family. The other side was that she recalled being resentful throughout her youth. Dressing appropriately and maintaining proper table manners were two of her father's strict behavioral demands. Due to her mother's extreme prudence, Bardot had few friends when she was a child. While playing with her sister, Bardot allegedly experienced a horrific incident that occurred when they smashed their parents' beloved vase. Consequently, their father began abusing them physically and verbally and began treating them like "strangers," instructing them to address their parents with the formal pronoun "vous" (meaning someone outside of the immediate family or with greater status in French). This incident laid the groundwork for Bardot's future disobedient conduct and solidified her hatred against her parents.
During World War II, Bardot stayed home more often due to the increasing restrictions imposed on civilians during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Her mother believed she would have a career as a ballet dancer when she became enamored with dancing to music. The prestigious Cours Hattemer school accepted Bardot as a student when she was seven years old. She attended school three days a week and managed to squeeze in dance lessons at a local studio all because of her mom's scheduling. In 1949, Bardot gained admission to the Conservatoire de Paris. Boris Knyazev, a Russian choreographer, taught her the ropes for three years. She went to both her public high school and a private Catholic high school in the area, Institut de la Tour.
In 1949, Helene Gordon-Lazareff, who oversaw Elle and Le Jardin des Modes, hired "Junior" Bardot. After appearing on the cover of Elle on March 8, 1950, at the age of fifteen, Bardot received an offer from Marc Allegret to star in the film Les Lauriers sont coupes. Bardot met Roger Vadim during the audition; he would later inform her that she had not received the job. Her grandparents stepped out in her support, saying, "If this little girl is to become a whore, cinema will not be the cause." Her parents disapproved of her acting profession. Following that, their love flourished. Her parents were adamantly opposed to her pursuing her education in England, but one night her father informed her that he had bought a train ticket for the next day. Bardot retaliated by plunging her head into a hot oven. Her parents stepped in and gave their blessing to the union, but they insisted that she wait until she is eighteen years old to tie the knot with Vadim.
Career
Between the years 1952 and 1955
Bardot landed a tiny role in the Jean Boyer–directed and Bourvil–starring comedy Crazy for Love in 1952 after making another cover appearance for Elle. The little role she played as the protagonist's cousin earned her 200,000 Swiss francs. This was Bardot's second major cinema performance, following her part in Willy Rozier's Manina, the Girl in the Bikini. Her Father's Portrait and The Long Teeth both featured her in 1953.
Act of Love, a 1953 Hollywood film starring Kirk Douglas and shot in Paris, included Bardot in a small role. She became a major star after attending the 1953 Cannes Film Festival.
Just like Bardot in the 1954 string concerto
The French adventure thriller Caroline and the Rebels and the Italian melodrama Concert of Intrigue were both released in 1954 and featured Bardot as the lead actress. In the 1955 film School for Love, she portrayed an alluring student with Jean Marais and Marc Allegret.
Bardot first appeared on cinema in 1955's Doctor at Sea, playing the role of Dirk Bogarde's romantic interest. The film came in at number three among British moviegoers that year.
Bardot co-starred with Gerard Philipe and Michelle Morgan in The Grand Maneuver, directed by René Clair. When it came to The Light Across the Street, Georges Lacombe felt the part was more substantial. In another Hollywood film, she portrayed the part of the handmaiden to Helen of Troy.
Casting brunette Bardot as a blonde was a special request of the film's Italian director, Mio figlio Nerone. She decided to color her hair instead of using a wig since she was happy with the results.
From 1956 until 1962, I became a star.
At the 1958 Venice Film Festival, Bardot posed for the photographers.
Screenland featured Bardot as its cover lady in March 1959.
After that, Bardot starred in four films, catapulting her to stardom. Naughty Girl, a musical in which Bardot played a rebellious student, was her theatrical debut. It became France's twelfth most popular picture of the year after its co-writing by Roger Vadim and direction by Michel Boisrond. Then followed Plucking the Daisy, Vadim's comic work. The Bride Is Too Beautiful by Louis Jourdan followed.
Finally, we have the monumental And God Created Woman. Vadim made his directing debut with the picture, which featured Bardot, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Curt Jurgens. The film, which followed a sexually immoral teenager in a supposedly respectable provincial village, was a huge success worldwide, including the United Kingdom, where it was named one of the top 10 movies of 1957. Author Peter Lev claims that the picture made $4 million in the US, which was a huge sum for a foreign film back then, and that it propelled Bardot to international prominence. She went by the name "sex kitten" from 1956 forward. The film was so controversial in the United States that its screening led to the incarceration of several theater owners.
Newspaper item from February 9, 1958, published in the United States
Paul O'Neil of Life elaborates on Bardot's enormous praise by saying:
Brigitte Bardot has been fortunate in many ways that have helped her achieve her present degree of recognition, in addition to her inherent abilities. Her arrival in the US market happens to align with the public's desire for a more realistic, racier alternative to the well-known American product, similar to the European sports vehicle.
In her early career, the talented photographer Sam Levin contributed to promoting Bardot's sexiness. Photographs taken by the British artist Cornel Lucas of Bardot in the '50s and '60s have become iconic representations of her in the public eye.
Following her role in And God Created Woman, Bardot co-starred with Charles Boyer in the comic La Parisienne, directed by Boisrond. Both In Case of Adversity, in which she played a criminal who courted Jean Gabin, and The Night Heaven Fell, in which she co-starred with Vadim in a melodrama, are noteworthy. The second one had the thirteenth-highest box office receipts in France that year. In 1958, Bardot earned more than any other French actress.
Bardot, in 1961, was
Despite the positive reviews for Julien Duvivier's The Female, the comedy Babette Goes to War was the top earning picture of 1944 for the year in France. Come Dance with Me by Boisrond was also quite popular.
The Truth, a courtroom drama by Henri-Georges Clouzot, was Bardot's following feature. What precipitated Bardot's adultery and suicide attempt was a highly known show. Being Bardot's most commercially successful film in France, the picture garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. In terms of box office receipts, it ranked third for the year. The film was the reason Bardot won the David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Actress.
On the comedy Please, Not Now!, she and Vadim worked together.renowned love affairs, a collection of short stories starring several famous people.
Based on her personal story, Bardot co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni in Louis Malle's film A Very Private Affair. The role she played in Love on a Pillow brought her even more fame.
A career in international film and music from 1962 to 1968
Brazil was Bardot's destination in 1964.
It seems like Bardot started making films in the mid-1960s with an eye toward appealing to a global audience. Le Mepris, directed by Jean-Luc Godard and produced by Joseph E. Levine, featured her with Jack Palance. The next year, she co-starred with Anthony Perkins in the hilarious picture Une ravissante idiote.
In the comical Dear Brigitte, Bardot made her Hollywood debut alongside James Stewart, who played a professor whose son had affections for her. The picture tanked at the box office, even with Bardot's brief cameo.
The paparazzi shot Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli when they filmed Contempt in Italy in 1963.
Viva Maria!, a Western buddy comedy! had a larger following. in the interest of director Louis Malle, who paired him with Jeanne Moreau. It was a smashing success in France and other nations across the globe, but it didn't quite make it in the US.
After making a cameo in Godard's Masculin Feminin, her most recent big flop was the French-English co-production Two Weeks in September. Following her little appearance in the ensemble picture Spirits of the Dead, in which she co-starred with Alain Delon, she went back to Hollywood for Sean Connery's Western Shalako, which bombed at the box office.
She recorded a plethora of hit songs and performed in many concerts in the '60s and '70s, mostly alongside Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury, and Sacha Distel. 'Harley Davidson,' 'Je Me Donne À Qui Me Plaît,' 'Bubble gum,' 'Contact,' 'Je Reviendrai Toujours Vers Toi,' 'L'Appareil À Sous,' 'La Madrague,' 'On Demenage,' 'Sidonie,' and 'Tu Veux, Ou Tu Veux Pas?' were among the songs featured in this batch."Le Soleil De Ma Vie," "Je t'aime," and "... to me in the least. After hearing Bardot's cries for mercy, Gainsbourg opted not to release the duet. However, he rerecorded it the following year with Jane Birkin, a British-born actress and model, and it became a massive hit all across Europe. The version with Bardot became a download blockbuster in 2006 when Universal Music began selling its back catalogue online, despite the fact that it came released in 1986. It was the third most downloaded app at that time.
Although Bardot
The years 1969–1973. Winding down.
Bardot embodied France's freedom from 1969 to 1972 in the role of the hitherto unknown Marianne.
Les Femmes, her next film, was a financial disaster, but her screwball comedy The Bear and the Doll was a hit. Her most recent films were comedies, namely Boulevard du Rhum and Les Novices. Bardot and Claudia Cardinale's partnership was a major factor in the financial success of The Legend of Frenchie King.
Bardot visited the Vatican in 1969.
Vadim co-starred with her in her final picture, Don Juan (often called If Don Juan Were a Woman). "Under what people call 'the Bardot myth,'" something interesting lay beneath the surface, according to Vadim, even if she was never considered the most professional actress in the world. As she has grown older, the Bardot tale has essentially become a souvenir... I broke off our relationship for whatever reason; I needed to tell her everything—my feelings about her as a person and a woman—that I wanted to express. To everyone around her, Brigitte has always seemed sexually liberated due to her extreme openness and freedom, which she never displays through aggressiveness. I stepped in to portray the masculine character since that made me giggle.
"Don Juan" was the actress's "next to last" film, she said during filming. She stuck to her pledge and directed just one feature film, The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot.
Bardot announced her retirement from acting in 1973, citing "a way to get out elegantly" as the reason.
Protection of animals' rights
Paul Watson and Bardot first crossed paths in 1977, the same year in which Watson founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. They were both part of a larger effort to condemn seal hunting and the "massacre" that occurred on the Canadian ice floe when the pups were still young. Bardot went to the ice floe to demonstrate her support for wildlife protection after getting an invitation from Watson. Pictures of Bardot cuddling with the baby seals quickly went global. As pals, Watson and Bardot maintained communication.
After appearing in more than 40 films and producing a slew of records, Bardot used her fame to advocate for animal rights. After seeing a need in the animal welfare movement, Brigitte Bardot established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation in 1986. She donated three million Swiss francs to the charity by giving up meat and other animal products and selling off her jewels and other belongings at auction.
Bardot has been an outspoken advocate for animal welfare, and she has always been against consuming horse flesh.
In 1989, while Bardot's mare was caring for her elderly neighbor Jean-Pierre Manivet's donkey, the mare shown an excessive level of care in the donkey. Because she was afraid her mare would perish if they were to breed, she had the male castrated. After the neighbor sued Bardot, the court fined him 20,000 francs for creating a "false scandal." The jury decided that Manivet was guilty.
Upon urging French television viewers to abstain from eating horse meat in January 1994, Bardot began receiving threats of physical violence. In light of the threats, she penned a letter to Jean Puech, the minister of agriculture of France, urging him to ban the sale of horse meat.
Writing to Chinese President Jiang Zemin in 1999, Bardot condemned "torturing bears and killing the world's last tigers and rhinos to produce aphrodisiacs," as reported in the French magazine VSD.
When Bardot was
Over the course of two years, she donated over $140,000 in 2001 to a program that sought to sterilize and find homes for 300,000 strays in Bucharest.
In a letter she sent to Queen Margrethe II of Denmark in August 2010, Bardot begged the Danish monarch to put an end to the killing of dolphins in the Faroe Islands. It "is a shame for Denmark and the Faroe Islands..." according to Bardot, who describes the event as a "macabre spectacle" in her letter. Rather than a hunt, this seems more like a bloodbath. a method that has no place in today's society and is considered outdated.
Following an official ceremony on April 22, 2011, French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand acknowledged bullfighting as an integral component of France's cultural legacy. Bardot wrote him a very scathing letter of complaint. On 25 May 2011, in honor of her support, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society renamed its rapid interceptor vessel, MV Gojira, to MV Brigitte Bardot.
The Brigitte Bardot Foundation and the Kagyupa International Monlam Trust of India have been running a veterinary care camp every year since 2013. During her time at Bodhgaya, Bardot devoted herself to the cause of animal welfare.
Bardot condemned Australian politician Greg Hunt's plan to exterminate 2 million cats on July 23, 2015, in an effort to save endangered species such as the Warru and the night parrot.
Japan requested Watson's extradition on July 21, 2024, and Bardot, who was 90 years old at the time, pleaded for his release from Greenland's custody. Midway through October 2024, Bardot asked French President Emmanuel Macron for political asylum for Watson via her attorneys and Sea Shepherd France. "Appear a bit braver," Bardot implored Macron. That same month, she started the Watson support demonstration outside the Paris Hotel de Ville. Bardot argued with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a letter she also wrote, urging her not to join the marine gravediggers' camp.
Personal life
Partnerships and wedlock
The duration of this marriage exceeds that of her other three unions combined; it is Bardot's fourth marriage. There are seventeen romantic relationships that she claims to have been a part of. After deciding that a relationship had reached "the present was getting lukewarm," Bardot would usually terminate it and look for something more intense. Because of it, I cheated quite a bit. I was getting ready to go just as the excitement was dying down.
On December 20, 1952, at the tender age of eighteen, Jean Bardot tied the knot with filmmaker Roger Vadim. She started an affair in 1956 with Jean-Louis Trintignant, who she co-starred with in the film And God Created Woman; they separated and eventually divorced the following year. At the time, Trintignant was married to actress Stephane Audran. Bardot and Vadim stayed in touch throughout their lives and collaborated on other projects even though they never had children. Trintignant and Bardot were together for about two years (during and after Bardot's divorce from Vadim), but they never got married. Their relationship was complicated since Trintignant was in the military and Bardot was involved with musician Gilbert Becaud.
As seen at Saint-Tropez in 1963 by Juliette Bardot and Sami Frey
Following her breakup with Vadim, Bardot purchased Le Castelet, a historic villa in Cannes dating back to the 16th century. The fourteen-bedroom mansion consisted of many structures surrounding by lush gardens, olive trees, and vineyards.
In 1958, she bought a second piece of land next to Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer in La Madrague. After her breakup with Trintignant in early 1958, she reportedly had a mental breakdown in Italy, according to newspaper stories. There were rumors that she had tried to take her own life two days ago while under the influence of sleeping pills, but her PR manager denied the claims. Jacques Charrier was an actor she began dating after a brief recuperation. She fell pregnant just before their June 1959 wedding, and the pair eventually sealed the knot. On January 11, 1960, Bardot gave birth to her only child, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier. In the early 1960s, Bardot had an affair with Glenn Ford. Following their 1962 divorce, the Charrier family raised Nicolas; he did not have much contact with his biological mother until he was an adult. Some said that Sami Frey was to blame for her breakup with Charrier. Bardot dumped Frey after a brief amount of courtship.
Her roommate from 1963 to 1965 was guitarist Bob Zagury.
French vocalist Sacha Distel and Parisian singer Bardot in 1958
Bardot wed German wealthy playboy Gunter Sachs for a third time from 14 July 1966 to 7 October 1969, despite the fact that they had already divorced the previous year. I was never a fan of James Bond, therefore it didn't endure.During filming of Shalako, she made the comment when rejecting Sean Connery's advances. Patrick Gilles was a co-star in her picture The Bear and the Doll; she began seeing him in 1968 and we ended our relationship in the spring of 1971.
John Gilmore, an actor; Christian Kalt, a ski instructor and bartender; Luigi "Gigi" Rizzi, a nightclub owner; Serge Gainsbourg, a singer-songwriter; Warren Beatty, an actor; and Laurent Vergez, with whom she had starred in Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman, were among Bardot's romantic interests in the years that followed.
Naked picture session for Playboy magazine was Bardot's way to commemorate her forty-first birthday in 1974. Around 1975, she started seeing artist Miroslav Brozek, who she would later appear in many of his sculptures. On occasion, Brozek would also perform under the name Jean Blaise. In December 1979, after living together for four years, the couple decided to split up.
From 1980 to 1985, Bardot was in a serious relationship with Allain Bougrain-Dubourg, a French television producer. Just before her 49th birthday on September 27, 1983, she drank too much red wine and took too many sleeping pills or tranquillizers. After that, Bardot walked out to the shore, and someone eventually pulled her out of the sea. Prior to her hasty transfer to the hospital, a stomach pump had helped flush out the drugs, which had saved her life. It wasn't until 1984 that Bardot had its first case of breast cancer. She chose to get radiation treatment on her own rather than chemotherapy. She finally recovered in 1986.
Bardot is now married to Bernard d'Ormale, her fourth husband. They tied the knot on August 16, 1992. In 2018, he denied dating Johnny Hallyday, Jimi Hendrix, or Mick Jagger in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche.
Political and legal concerns
Bardot openly supported President Charles de Gaulle during his presidency in the 1960s.
In her 1999 work Le Carre de Pluton, Bardot criticizes the practice of ritually slaughtering sheep at the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. Plus, in the book's "Open Letter to My Lost France" section, she vents her frustrations about foreigners, especially Muslims, flooding into France, her birthplace. A French court fined her 30,000 francs for her comment in June of 2000. Her first publishing of this open letter in Le Figaro resulted in two penalties for similar words: one in 1998 and another in 1997.
"Un cri dans le silence," a 2003 book she wrote, compared the homosexuals in her life to "fairground freaks" and portrayed them as "jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air and with their little castrato voices moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through," she said, in contrast to her close gay friends. "Apart from my husband—who maybe will cross over one day as well—I am entirely surrounded by homos," Bardot said in a letter to a French homosexual magazine, defending herself. They have been my rock, my confidants, my adopted children, and friends through thick and thin.
Among the many topics she attacked in her book were Islam, racism, immigration, and women in politics. Defeating what she called "genetic mixing," she praised previous generations for giving their lives to stave against invaders in her book. On June 10, 2004, a French court convicted Bardot guilty for the fourth time of inciting racial hate and fined him €5,000. In court, Bardot apologized and denied the charge of racial prejudice, saying, "I never intentionally intended to harm anybody." The 2008 conviction of Bardot for inciting religious and racial hatred stemmed from a letter she had written and submitted to the then-French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. In the letter, she voiced her disdain of Muslims in France who kill lambs ritualistically by slitting their throats without giving them anesthesia. Concerning Muslims, she vented her anger at being manipulated by a group that is damaging her country and trying to impose its views on her. The trial concluded on June 3, 2008, with a conviction and a punishment of €15,000. It was the prosecutor's stated intention not to bring accusations of racial hate against Bardot.
When Sarah Palin was running for vice president as a Republican in 2008, Bardot criticized her, calling her a "disgrace to women" and a "stupid" for her comments. Because of her stances on climate change and gun control, she was quite critical of Alaska's departing governor. The fact that Palin seemed unconcerned about the situation of polar bears and supported oil development in the Arctic further irritated her.
On August 13, 2010, Bardot publicly criticized American filmmaker Kyle Newman for his plans to create a movie on her. After she told him, "You won't be able to film my life until I die," he should have expected sparks to flare.
Bardot sent an open letter to the French government in 2014 demanding the prohibition of the Jewish ceremonial slaughter shechita. "Bardot has once again shown her clear insensitivity for minority groups with the substance and style of her letter...She may well be concerned for the welfare of animals but her longstanding support for the far-right and for discrimination against minorities in France shows a constant disdain for human rights instead," the European Jewish Congress said in response.
When a Saint-Tropez store sold items with Bardot's picture in 2015, she threatened to sue. In 2018, she made it clear that she was with the Yellow Vest movement.
In an open letter she addressed to the island's prefect, Amaury de Saint-Quentin, on March 19, 2019, Bardot accused the Reunionese of being cruel to animals and referred to them as "autochthones who have maintained the genes of savages”. In a letter she sent through her nonprofit on animal cruelty, she makes a passing reference to "beheadings of goats and billy goats" during festivals and how they bring up "reminiscences of cannibalism from past centuries." The prosecutor's office chose to initiate legal proceedings the next day.
In June 2021, the court in Arras sentenced 86-year-old Bardot €5,000 for uttering insulting remarks against hunters and its national president, Willy Schraen. She attacked hunting and called hunters "sub-men," "drunkards," and inheritors of "genes of cruel barbarism inherited from our primitive ancestors" in an article she posted on her organization's website towards the end of 2019. At the time of the hearing, she had not yet copied and pasted the comments from the website. Following her 2019 letter to the prefect of Reunion, a French court found her guilty of public insults on November 4, 2021, and fined her €20,000—her largest sentence up to that point—.
Le Pen was the head of the National Front and a former counselor to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the principal far-right party in France, as well as Bardot's spouse Bernard d'Ormale. Le Pen is the head of the National Front, and Bardot has spoken highly of her, calling her "the Joan of Arc of the 21st century," and has made her support clear. She was a Le Pen supporter in the 2012 and 2017 French presidential elections.
After many convictions for inciting racial hatred, Bardot now has six penalties as of November 2021.