Brigitte Bardot, a screen siren of the 1950s and 60s who famously walked away from the silver screen to become a polarising force in animal rights and right-wing politics, has died at the age of 91.
The Brigitte Bardot Foundation confirmed her passing on December 28, noting that she died at her home in southern France. While no official cause of death was released, Bardot had been hospitalised as recently as last month.
“The Brigitte Bardot Foundation announces with immense sadness the passing of its founder and president,” the organisation said in a statement. “She chose to abandon her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare.”
Bardot’s ascent to global superstardom began with a lightning bolt: the 1956 film And God Created Woman. Directed by her first husband, Roger Vadim, the film featured a table-dancing Bardot and shattered the era’s notions of “bourgeois respectability.”
With her signature blonde mane and “pouty irreverence,” she became the face of a liberated France. Her cultural impact was so profound that in 1969, her features were used as the model for Marianne, the official national emblem of the French Republic. Her likeness appeared on everything from coins to postage stamps.
At the height of her fame and after 28 films, Bardot stunned the world by retiring from acting to champion animal rights. She traded the red carpet for the Arctic ice, where she famously campaigned against the slaughter of baby seals.
“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told the AP in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of an animal that suffers.”
Her tireless work earned her France’s highest honor, the Legion of Honour, in 1985. However, her advocacy eventually became inseparable from her increasingly controversial political views.
With her passing, France loses a woman who was, in many ways, two different people: the face of a modernising, liberated nation, and a fierce critic of the multicultural society that followed.
Source: CBS News
