Brigitte Bardot, the international French actress and sex symbol, died on Sunday morning. She was 91 years-old.
Bardot Passes Away
Bardot’s death was announced by her eponymous foundation. She had reportedly been ill in a hospital in Toulon, France.
“The Brigitte Bardot Foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Madame Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned actress and singer, who chose to abandon her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare and her foundation,” the foundation said in a statement.
In the wake of Bardot’s death, French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to her on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
“Her films, her voice, her dazzling glory, her initials, her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom. French existence, universal brilliance. She touched us. We mourn a legend of the century,” Macron wrote.
Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally party, also honored Bardot. He described her as “a woman of heart, conviction, and character.”
“The French people have lost today the Marianne they so loved and whose beauty astonished the world,” Bardella wrote on X.
“Brigitte Bardot was a woman of heart, conviction, and character,” he continued. “A fervent patriot, a lover of animals whom she protected throughout her life, she embodied an entire era of French history, but also and above all, a certain idea of courage and freedom.”
Bardot’s History
Bardot was known as the original “sex kitten.” She skyrocketed to international fame when she starred in the 1956 movie And God Created Woman.
Bardot worked with some of the top directors of her time, including Jean-Luc Godard, Henri-Georges Clouzot and Louis Malle. Other popular movies of hers include La Vérité, Contempt (Le Mépris) and Viva Maria!
Bardot famously stepped away from her film career in 1973. Though she was at her peak of fame, Bardot simply said at the time that she’d “had enough.”
“There was some exhaustion there, not just from the pace of work, but just [being] the endless subject of a camera lens, whether it’s a still camera lens or a movie lens,” James Clarke, author of the photo book “Being Bardot,” told Fox News earlier this year. “That is one of the things that come[s] out a little bit [in this book]. . . . She got to that point where it’s just like, ‘I’ve kind of done it and 20 years has been sufficient.'”
In the decades since then, Bardot’s focus shifted to animal rights. Indeed, earlier this year, Bardot said that she didn’t care if anyone remembered her. Instead, she hoped that her fans would remember the “respect we owe to animals.”
“The more I advance in my life, the more I fear humans,” Bardot said at the time. “I’m more animal than human.”
Bardot had been married to her fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale for 33 years at the time of her death. She is survived by him and her son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier.
Rest in peace, Brigitte Bardot.