Actress Brigitte Bardot dies aged 91

The Brigitte Bardot Foundation has announced the death of its founder, the French film star and animal rights campaigner, at the age of 91.

“The Brigitte Bardot foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Madame Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned actress and singer, who chose to abandon her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare and her foundation,” the statement sent to Agence France-Presse on Sunday read.

Born in Paris in 1934 to a prosperous Catholic family, Bardot trained as a ballet dancer at the prestigious Conservatoire de Paris whilst working as a model. She appeared on the cover of Elle in 1950 aged just 15, which led to film roles and a meeting with director Roger Vadim, whom she married in 1952.

Her breakthrough came with Vadim’s 1956 film And God Created Woman, in which she played an uninhibited teenager in Saint-Tropez. The film became a huge hit and turned Bardot into an international icon and sex symbol.

Throughout the 1960s, she appeared in high-profile films including Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Truth, Louis Malle’s Very Private Affair, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt. 

Bardot also pursued a music career, recording the original version of Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus during an extramarital affair with the songwriter. She later asked him not to release it to avoid scandal, and he re-recorded it with Jane Birkin.

She retired from acting in 1973 aged 39, dedicating herself to animal protection activism. She joined protests against seal hunts in 1977 and established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation in 1986, campaigning on issues including dog extermination in Romania and dolphin killing in the Faroe Islands.

Her later years were marked by increasingly controversial political views. In 2003, her book A Cry in the Silence attacked gay men and lesbians, schoolteachers and what she called the “Islamisation of French society”, resulting in a conviction for inciting racial hatred. She was a longtime supporter of France’s Front National, now known as National Rally.

Bardot was married four times and had one son, Nicholas, born in 1960 with her second husband Jacques Charrier. She married former Le Pen adviser Bernard d’Ormale in 1992.

The foundation’s statement did not specify the time or place of death.