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Brigitte Bardot's full name is Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot. Born and raised in Paris, she spent her childhood enjoying the luxuries of an upper class family, but it wasn’t as charming as it sounds.
Her cover photo invited an acting offer from director Marc Allégret (center) for his film ‘Les Lauriers sont coupés,’ although she was informed after the audition that she didn’t get the role. What’s important, however, is that at the audition Bardot met screenwriter and director Roger Vadim (right).
Before acting was even an idea for her, Bardot wanted to be a dancer, and she was accepted to the Conservatoire de Paris, where she trained for several years.
Helped along by her social background, Bardot met the director of Elle magazine, Hélène Lazareff, who hired the young teen in 1949 as a model. In 1950, at just 15 years old, Bardot appeared on the cover of Elle, and everything quickly snowballed from there.
Bardot has been quite frank with the media about her strict upbringing, as her father reportedly had stern rules about things like how to act and what to wear. Little did he know he was only pushing her further.
Bardot fell for Roger Vadim, though her parents fiercely objected and threatened to send her off to England. She reportedly put her head into the oven in retaliation, and fortunately they came to the agreement that she would wait till she was 18 to marry Vadim.
After Vadim's film, several directors called on her and she starred in many more films, including Christian-Jaque's 1959 'Babette Goes to War' ('Babette s'en va-t-en guerre'), where Bardot co-starred with Jacques Charrier and fell in love again.
The two were married in 1952, when Bardot was 18. After Bardot's roles in a few comedies where she often played naughty young women, in 1956 the couple made a melodrama together, a film that would launch Bardot into international fame, but that would also mark the end for them.
Photographs and films further iconized Bardot as a bombshell, which was a new kind of power emerging among women, and the actress became the subject of a 1959 essay by famed French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir, which declared Bardot to be the first liberated woman of post-war France.
In 1952, Bardot appeared on the cover of Elle again, and this time actually landed a small film role in Jean Boyer's 1952 'Crazy for Love' ('Le trou normand') starring French actor Bourvil.
In 1959, Bardot married Jacques Charrier, and that same year, at age 25, she became pregnant. She had her first and only child, Nicolas, in 1960, but later she would confess that she didn't want to be a mother and in fact resented her pregnancy and tried to abort it.
Still at the height of her stardom, and after divorcing Charrier, the French icon went to London in 1963 to shoot the film 'The Ravishing Idiot' ('Une ravissante idiote') by Edouard Molinaro. She starred alongside American actor Anthony Perkins, and her fame extended further into English territory.
On her 26th birthday in 1960, shortly after giving birth, Bardot tried to take her life again at her villa in France. She detailed her struggle with alcohol abuse and self-destructive depression in her autobiography 'Initiales B.B.' She wrote, “You cannot escape the distress which follows great happiness.”
Her book revealed the dark side to her glamorous image, one rife with abusive lovers, betrayal, exploitation, and being treated as a prostitute. She wanted to be a ballerina but was turned into a sexual fantasy as a teenager, and it took a serious toll on her.
The '60s saw Bardot in more internationally-aimed films, with few major successes but consistent work nonetheless. Most notable was her role in Louis Malle's 1965 film 'Viva Maria!' for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress.
Considered to be Bardot's best film, 'Le Mépris' ('Contempt') by Jean-Luc Godard was released in 1963.
Bardot also performed in musicals and recorded many popular songs in the '60s and '70s, largely in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, and including songs like 'Harley Davidson' and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non-plus.'
In somewhat of an unpredictable move, the star devoted herself to defending the rights of animals. She's quoted as saying, "I gave my youth and my beauty to men, I am now giving my wisdom and my experience, the best of myself, to animals.”
She was quite good at it! She led the fight against the sale of skins and furs in Europe, succeeded in a ban on tail docking, banning the import of cat and dog skins, and the European Commission's ban on imports of products derived from seal hunting.
In 1966, Bardot married German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs, for what would only be three years.
From 1969 to 1978, Bardot became the official face of Marianne—the national personification of the French Republic symbolizing liberty, equality, fraternity and reason—who had previously been anonymous.
Her penultimate film was ex-husband Roger Vadim's erotic drama 'Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman' (1973), their fifth film together. In a poetic way, it closed out her career as an icon for sexual liberation, and it cemented her decision to retire in 1973.
In the years that followed, Bardot appears to have deliberately destroyed her image as a beauty icon. She refused the popular route of cosmetic surgery, she dressed carelessly, she gave away her infamous Saint Tropez villa to her foundation, and moved into a small house with rescued animals.
In 1992, she wed extreme right-wing political aide Bernard d'Ormale, adviser to French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. This union appeared to heavily influence her political choices and her public support of the far-right party Le Front National.
While some defended her as merely focusing on the animals, Bardot continually threw insults at Muslims and immigrants over the years, even penning an open letter to Nicolas Sarkozy in 2006 that earned her a fine of €15,000 (about US$18,000) for inciting racial hatred.
Bardot was soon back in the spotlight, but this time for her offensive remarks about Muslim religion and culture. From 1996 to 2008, she was fined five times for inciting racial hatred.
In a 1996 interview with newspaper Le Figaro, she began her anti-Muslim tirade against Eid al-Adha, the traditional slaughtering of sheep that takes place once a year.
Bardot's life was subject to numerous injustices veiled by female sexual liberation, and as a result she suffered greatly, but her influence and experience still inform the contemporary discussion, and her story will be an important piece of history.
See also: (Sydney Morning Herald) (The Guardian)
See also: Things you probably didn't know about Marilyn Monroe.
Directed by Vadim, the film 'Et Dieu Créa la Femme' ('And God Created Woman') garnered international recognition for the pair, but during filming, Bardot fell in love with her co-star, Jean-Louis Trintignant, for whom she left Vadim in 1957. Her reputation as a “sex kitten” had taken flight.
French former actress and singer Brigitte Bardot, often referred to by her initials B.B., was one of the world’s biggest stars in the ‘50s and ‘60s, pushing the envelope in more ways than one. With a career starting at just 15 years old, Bardot became so much more than the 40+ films and numerous songs she recorded; she was mythologized as a sex symbol, a symbol of France’s liberty, and a new post-war woman.
Yet, despite admiration for her beauty, Bardot was mistreated throughout her career and struggled with a deep unhappiness and alcoholism. She came to dislike her iconography and sought to destroy it, which came with good things like her activism for animals, but also spiraled into a string of controversies regarding her far-right political beliefs.
Click through to learn more about Brigitte Bardot, the living legend carrying the burden of recent history’s contradictions regarding women, Hollywood, and freedom.
Brigitte Bardot: the complicated story of a beauty icon
The beloved B.B. turns 90 years old on September 28
CELEBRITY Actress
French former actress and singer Brigitte Bardot, often referred to by her initials B.B., was one of the world’s biggest stars in the ‘50s and ‘60s, pushing the envelope in more ways than one. With a career starting at just 15 years old, Bardot became so much more than the 40+ films and numerous songs she recorded; she was mythologized as a sex symbol, a symbol of France’s liberty, and a new post-war woman.
Yet, despite admiration for her beauty, Bardot was mistreated throughout her career and struggled with a deep unhappiness and alcoholism. She came to dislike her iconography and sought to destroy it, which came with good things like her activism for animals, but also spiraled into a string of controversies regarding her far-right political beliefs.
Click through to learn more about Brigitte Bardot, the living legend carrying the burden of recent history’s contradictions regarding women, Hollywood, and freedom.