Brigitte Bardot died at 91: films, loves, life, Saint Tropez

Brigitte Bardot is dead today at 91 years old in his country home in La Madraguenear Saint Tropez. Grumpy to the last and jealous of her private life, she was among the characters most loved by the French and beyond. The girl who wanted to become a dancer and who entered the collective imagination with her explosive sensuality, four husbands and champion of the animal rightsshe’s gone forever.

Brigitte Bardot dead at 91: films, loves, life, career

The French diva came from a strict upbringing. Daughter of the industrialist Louis Bardot and Anne-Marie Mucel, Bardot was born in 1934 in a bourgeois environment where businessmen, intellectuals and artists were at home. Her father, a cinema buff, and her mother, passionate about fashion and dance, shape her daughter’s passions. A restless personality who suffers from the mother’s preference for sister minor Marie-Jeanne. At 7 years old Brigitte began studying classical dance and at 15 she enrolled at the Paris Conservatory.

Not long after the editor of the magazine Ellea friend of her mother, proposes to create fashion shoots for teenagers. Brigitte gets first covers. From here to be noticed by director Marc Allégret the step is short, but not painless. Her parents are against her career as an actress and the fact that Brigitte falls in love with Allégret’s assistant, Roger Vadimtriggers further conflicts. But cinema is destiny and in 1952 Bardot makes her debut in Le Trou Normand by Jean Boyer.

Golden years under the Saint-Tropez sun

The film is also from ’52 Hand, naked girl by Willy Rozier, in which Bardot makes one of the first appearances without veilsexactly, but with a bikini. The event causes a sensation and the bikini becomes the fashion of the moment (for the more daring). At the same time, his business takes off relationship with VadimThat marries a alone sixteen years old in 1952 despite theparental opposition.

Not for long: in 1957 the two separated and Brigitte began a relationship with the actor Jean-Louis Trintignant. The years spent with Vadim forever marked his career, turning her into a living legend thanks to the film And God created woman (1956). Brigitte reveals herself in hers Dionysian splendor joined to mischievous face from a childish pout to a generous one blonde hair. He stars alongside Trintignant and discovers Saint-Tropez, until then unknown fishing village. And he is immediately a sex symbol.

Many loves, one child and glam roles

Roger Vadim tries to make the big leap in the USA, who however consider BB too risqué: cinema in those parts is still held hostage by Hays Code which expressly prohibits nudity and “lascivious dancing.” In Mademoiselle Pigalledirected by Michel Boisrond, Brigitte has the role of licentious and wild daughter of an owner of night club. Since the film is officially European, the film is also successful in the United States. Bardot’s exquisitely French accent drives crazy overseas.

1957 is a crucial year: the divorce from Vadimthe secret relationship with the singer Gilbert Bécaudanother liaison with the actor Raf Vallone and, in 1958, with the singer and composer Sacha Distel. In 1959 Brigitte marries Jacques Charriermet on the set of Babette goes to war. With Charier Brigitte Bardot will have hers only sonNicholas Jacques.

Busier films and the siege of the paparazzi

The media pressure on her super sexy image and thepaparazzi obsession for his privacy they have a tremendous impact on Brigitte, who as the years go by she measures herself with more involved roles. Like in the movie The truth (1960), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, who won theOscar as best foreign language film. Here Brigitte plays a young Parisian accused to have killed her boyfriend. The trial could cost her the death penalty and his own fame as a woman of free morals it doesn’t help.

Filming the film, which is very demanding, keeps her away from her husband and her recently born son. Bardot starts a relation with the co-star Sami Frey. Despite the success of the film and the universal applause for his interpretation, Brigitte is going through a moment of great emotional difficulty and after filming she attempts suicide. It won’t be the first time.

On the notes of jealousy between Gunter Sachs and Serge Gainsbourg

In 1961 Brigitte Bardot is the protagonist of Privacy by Louis Malle, in which he stars alongside Marcello Mastroianni. A film that resonates with many biographical aspects of the actress, who the following year divorce from Jacques Charrier. Also in 1962 he added to his film career that of singer. In the meantime, yes wife a third time (with ceremony in Las Vegas and honeymoon in Tahiti) with Gunter Sachs, photographer and scion of a line of wealthy industrialists.

A coup de foudre perfectly fine for the time playboywho will suffer the ravages of jealousy due to a short but intense relation of Bardot with the singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourgwith whom he began collaborating in 1967. Gainsbourg dedicates songs to her like Bonnie and Clyde, Comic Strip and above all Je t’aime… Moi non pluswhich caused such a scandal that its diffusion had to be blocked. The song will be taken up a year later by Gainsbourg together with his new partner, Jane Birkin.

The last films before leaving the stage

In the 1963 Bardot is directed by Jean-Luc Godard no Contemptbased on the novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia. Filmed between Capri And Sperlonga keeping onlookers at bay obsessed witherotic presence of the French diva, the film features Bardot in the role of a busty typist struggling with a husband theater writer and a sexually invasive producer.

Brigitte would play herself two years later in a cameo next to James Stewart in Erasmus the Freckled (Dear Brigitte). At the age of forty, in 1974after having shot more than 50 films, Bardot announces hers retirement from the scene.

The divorce from Sachs and animal activism

The relationship with Serge Gainsbourg will not be the only one to enliven the marriage with Gunter Sachs. In the summer of 1968 it was the turn of Gigi Rizzi, actor, entrepreneur and playboy. Sachs files for divorce, which is finalized in ’69. In the meantime Brigitte continues theanimal activism started in 1962after the birth of his son. That year, in a historical moment in which most divas proudly walk around in fur, her first appearance in a television program in which the actress reports the torture suffered by them slaughter animals. Later it will become vegetarian.

In 1986 he created the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for Animal Welfare and Protectionwhich he initially financed by selling his jewelery and other personal items for three million francs. Become one of most influential activists on issues of animal respect andabolition of intensive farming. He also supported the marine life organization Sea Shepherd.

Confidentiality, non-conformism and no retouching

Brigitte Bardot was an icon not only that of cinema but also of sexual revolution occurred between the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century, and then became icon of itself in a game of mirrors from which he emerges with extreme dignity and coherence.

A disturbing beauty which she denied («I’ve never found myself pretty»), copied several times by fashion (remember the first Claudia Schiffer?) and by cinema and left as much as possible natural, in line with the passage of time. A’mysterious and unconventional naturean underlying sadness that led her to attempt suicide on several occasions and which made him the character he is.

The fourth marriage, the memoirs and the biopic

In the 1992 Bardot marries Bernard D’Ormale. It will be the longest-lasting of his marriages. D’Ormale is an activist of the Rassemblement National (known to us as National Front) as well as friend and advisor of Jean-Marie Le Pen. A’lasting union which however will see yet another attempt by the actress, saved at the last minute from her new husband, by take one’s own life in November of the same year.

Bardot always has voted for right and doesn’t tell them. In 1996 he published the autobiographical book Initials BB (They call me BB), which costs her one summons to court by theex-husband Jacques Charrier and del son Nicholas Jacques. In the 2022 France 2 broadcast the biopic in six episodes Bardotwith Julia de Nunez as Brigitte, who did not hesitate to dismiss the work as “bullshit”.

A sensual muse. Always and forever

For many of those who are young today Brigitte Bardot was a blurry figure, a gruff old lady who defends the animals and sometimes, careless of pleasure or not, lift controversy with statements Often misunderstood. Not so for previous generations i millennialswho will never forget his grace unique, his complex personality and his image of erotic divinity.

A legend, a female myth who inspired artists like Milo Manarawhich he accomplished 25 watercolours dedicated to the diva. In 1969 the sculptor Alain Gourdon he depicted her as Mariannesymbol of French Republicwhile in 1974 Andy Warhol dedicated a to her portrait applying the same technique used in the portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.

Brigitte provided the inspiration for the character of Barbarella by Jean-Claude Forest and for the blonde sexy gunslinger fantasy-western Djustinecreated by Enrico Teodorani. There statue of Brigitte Bardot currently visible at Saint-Tropez it was created in 2017 on the occasion of the diva’s 83rd birthday. The Slovenian railways they gave the actress’s name to locomotives with sinuous lines.