French film sensation Brigitte Bardot, a symbol of sexual liberation in the 1950s and 1960s who reinvented herself as an animal rights defender and embraced far-right views, died on Sunday aged 91, her foundation said.
She passed away in her Saint-Tropez home, La Madrague, on the French Riviera.
“The Brigitte Bardot Foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Madame Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned actor and singer, who chose to abandon her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare and her foundation,” it said in a statement sent to AFP.
It did not give the cause of death. Bardot was briefly hospitalised in October for what her office called a “minor” procedure. Bardot at the time had lambasted “idiot” internet users for speculation that she had died.
Tributes were immediately paid to the star who was known as “BB” in her home country, with President Emmanuel Macron calling her a “legend” of the 20th century.
An AFP reporter in Saint-Tropez saw a hearse enter then leave her property, as a handful of fans came to lay bunches of flowers near a police car that was blocking the road to her home.
Julia Gangotena, 36, was among the few to have made it up to Bardot’s blue front gate, where she left some white roses near a Christmas wreath and a dog’s bowl full of water, she said, showing AFP a picture.
“She’s a woman who lived as much in the thronging crowd as she did alone – profoundly alone,” she said.
Born on September 28, 1934, in Paris, Bardot was raised in a well-off traditional Catholic household.
She was married four times and had one child, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier, with her second husband, actor Jacques Charrier.
Bardot became a global star after appearing in And God Created Woman in 1956, and went on to appear in about 50 more movies before giving up acting in 1973.
She turned her back on celebrity to look after abandoned animals, saying she was “sick of being beautiful every day”.
“Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom,” Macron wrote on X.
His tribute, though, made no reference to Bardot’s alignment with far-right views in her post-cinema years, which alienated many of her fans.
Bardot was convicted five times for hate speech, mostly about Muslims, but also the inhabitants of the French island of Reunion whom she described as “savages”.
A supporter of far-right politician Marine Le Pen, Bardot declared herself “against the Islamisation of France” in a 2003 book, which argued that “our ancestors, our grandfathers, our fathers have for centuries given their lives to push out successive invaders”.
The head of Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party, Jordan Bardella, called Bardot an “ardent patriot”.
Le Pen, who has been barred from public office pending an appeal trial in January, called her “incredibly French: free, untamable, whole”.
In her final book, Mon BBcedaire (My BB Alphabet), published weeks before her death, Bardot fired barbs at what she described as a “dull, sad, submissive” France and at her home town of Saint-Tropez, now packed with the wealthy tourists she helped attract.
The book also contained derogatory remarks about gay and transgender people.
After retiring from cinema, Bardot withdrew to her home in the Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez where she devoted herself to fighting for animals.
Her calling apparently came when she encountered a goat on the set of her final film, The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot. To save it from being killed, she bought the animal and kept it in her hotel room.
Bardot went on to found the Brigitte Bardot Foundation in 1986, which now has 70,000 donors and around 300 employees, according to its website.
“I’m very proud of the first chapter of my life,” she told AFP in a 2024 interview before her 90th birthday.
“It gave me fame, and that fame allows me to protect animals – the only cause that truly matters to me.”
She added that she lived in “silent solitude” in La Madrague, surrounded by nature and content to be “fleeing humanity”.
On the subject of death, she warned that she wanted to avoid the presence of “a crowd of idiots” at her funeral and wished for a simple wooden cross above her grave, in her garden – the same as for her animals.
-Agence France-Presse