Brigitte Bardot - ©Theda Bara

The actress I highlight in this post is Brigitte Bardot, who, in addition to acting in films, is a French activist for animal rights, who began her artistic career as a singer and model. She was considered one of the biggest sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s.

“BB”, as Brigitte Bardot still likes to be called, in 1960, was considered by TIME magazine as one of the hundred most influential names in the history of fashion. She became internationally known in 1956, after starring in the controversial film produced by her then husband, Roger Vadim: “Et Dieu... Créa La Femme”, when she played the character “Juliette Hardy”.

Brigitte Bardot was considered a woman ahead of her time, drawing the attention of even French politicians and intellectuals, in addition to being considered the most controversial woman in post-war France. 

In 1985, she was awarded the French Legion of Honor, but, as usual, refused the award. She was also elected one of the ten most beautiful and sensual actresses in the history of cinema, according to a survey carried out in England in 2009.

In several statements after abandoning her acting career, Bardot accused the press of being responsible for the depression she suffered throughout her life. She hated the hordes of journalists and paparazzi who endlessly followed her every step and mercilessly exposed her private life in the media.

Despite the popularity she enjoyed at the height of her career, her film roles provoked hostility from many of the rich and powerful within film companies, as well as ordinary citizens who despised her hedonistic lifestyle, which made it difficult for Bardot to act more often in Hollywood productions, so Brigitte Bardot ended up being an actress more focused on French cinema and that is why, perhaps, even though she acted in 42 films, she never came close to winning an Oscar and does not have her name engraved on the starry sidewalk of celebrities who are honored in Los Angeles. Though I believe she wouldn't accept those awards either.

Bardot announced the end of his career at the end of 1974, shortly before his 40th birthday. At the time, she said that she would leave the cinema at 40, because it was a way to “go out with elegance”. In the 1980s and 1990s, “BB” turned down dozens of invitations to return to acting and, over the years, denied proposals and banned many directors from staging films about her life biography. Her last film role was, “Arabelle”, in the film: “L'Histoire très bonne et très joyeuse de Colinot trousse-chemise”.

Brigitte Bardot, born Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot, September 28, 1934, Place Violet, Paris, France, now 88 years old, resides in La Madrague, a property isolated from everything, located in Saint-Tropez, which she has owned since the early 1960s. She and her current husband, Bernard D'Ormale, live on this property, along with many animals that Bardot rescued from the streets and shelters when starting the Fondation Brigitte Bardot.

Bardot was married four times. The first with Roger Vadim, artistic name of: Roger Vladimir Plemiannikov (1928-2000), French filmmaker, with whom he lived from 1950 to 1952, the year they officially married, having divorced five years later, in 1957, with the discovery by Vadim of his wife’s extramarital affair with the actor Jean-Louis Trintignant (1930-2022); her second husband was the French comedian and actor Jacques Charrier (1936-), from 1959 to 1963, the year of another divorce, after rumors that she had cheated on him with the French pop singer Sacha Distel (1933-2004); her third marriage was to the German playboy and multimillionaire Fritz Gunter Sachs (1932-2011), heir to Fichtel & Sachs, the German motorcycle company, from 1966 to 1969, but this time the divorce was due to the betrayal of Sachs, who maintained a long relationship with the Iranian queen Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari (1932-2001), then wife of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980); and the fourth and last marriage, in 1992, which lasts until today, is with Bernard D’Ormale (1941), political adviser to the French government.