The eternally unyielding Sex symbol and cinema icon Brigitte Bardot turns 90
She dyed her hair blonde, danced the mambo with lewd hip movements and lolled in the sands of Saint-Tropez: Brigitte Bardot.
Image: Courtesy Album
In "Und immer lockt das Weib", directed by Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot and Curd Jürgens play the leading roles. The film made Bardot world-famous overnight. Production still, taken on January 16, 1957.
Image: KEYSTONE
The chansonnier, jazz guitarist and composer Sacha Distel with the film icon in Venice, Italy, taken on September 4, 1958. He sang the song "Le soleil de ma vie" as a duet with Brigitte Bardot, with whom he had a one-year love affair.
Image: KEYSTONE
Actress Brigitte Bardot in the basket of a hot air balloon during the shooting of the film "Babette goes to war". Shot on April 11, 1959 in Abingdon, England.
Image: KEYSTONE
The Swiss-French director Jean-Luc Godard, left with cigarette, shot the film "Le mépris" with Brigitte Bardot in Nice. Shot on August 3, 1963.
Image: KEYSTONE
Brigitte Bardot and the legendary German playboy Gunter Sachs apply for a marriage certificate in Las Vegas on July 14, 1966. An hour later, they marry in a private ceremony. It was Sachs' second marriage.
Image: AP Photo
Brigitte Bardot and her husband Gunter Sachs shopping on the King's Road in London on November 29, 1967. They are the dream couple of the 1960s.
Image: KEYSTONE
Brigitte Bardot arrives at Geneva-Cointrin Airport on March 22, 1971. The film star likes to travel to Switzerland to go skiing.
Image: KEYSTONE
Undated photo on the occasion of the exhibition "Brigitte Bardot, les années 'insouciance'" in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
Image: EPA/Douglas Kirkland, Celebrity Vault
She dyed her hair blonde, danced the mambo with lewd hip movements and lolled in the sands of Saint-Tropez: Brigitte Bardot.
Image: Courtesy Album
In "Und immer lockt das Weib", directed by Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot and Curd Jürgens play the leading roles. The film made Bardot world-famous overnight. Production still, taken on January 16, 1957.
Image: KEYSTONE
The chansonnier, jazz guitarist and composer Sacha Distel with the film icon in Venice, Italy, taken on September 4, 1958. He sang the song "Le soleil de ma vie" as a duet with Brigitte Bardot, with whom he had a one-year love affair.
Image: KEYSTONE
Actress Brigitte Bardot in the basket of a hot air balloon during the shooting of the film "Babette goes to war". Shot on April 11, 1959 in Abingdon, England.
Image: KEYSTONE
The Swiss-French director Jean-Luc Godard, left with cigarette, shot the film "Le mépris" with Brigitte Bardot in Nice. Shot on August 3, 1963.
Image: KEYSTONE
Brigitte Bardot and the legendary German playboy Gunter Sachs apply for a marriage certificate in Las Vegas on July 14, 1966. An hour later, they marry in a private ceremony. It was Sachs' second marriage.
Image: AP Photo
Brigitte Bardot and her husband Gunter Sachs shopping on the King's Road in London on November 29, 1967. They are the dream couple of the 1960s.
Image: KEYSTONE
Brigitte Bardot arrives at Geneva-Cointrin Airport on March 22, 1971. The film star likes to travel to Switzerland to go skiing.
Image: KEYSTONE
Undated photo on the occasion of the exhibition "Brigitte Bardot, les années 'insouciance'" in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
Image: EPA/Douglas Kirkland, Celebrity Vault
Brigitte Bardot caused hysteria with her beauty, her taboo-breaking caused scandals. On September 28, she turns 90. A portrait of a woman who could never - and would never - do anything else.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Brigitte Bardot is not only one of the most beautiful women in the world, she also caused controversy with her rigorous attitude.
- Her harsh and often radical views met with widespread criticism, but Bardot always remained true to herself.
- With the same passion with which she once devoted herself to cinema and men, she now campaigns for animal welfare.
- The film star turns 90 on September 28.
She was the star among stars: Brigitte Bardot was idolized and coveted, and was one of the most beautiful and scandalous women in the world. Even today, her radicalism and complexity make her unique.
At the height of her fame, she abruptly ended her career and retired to her home in Saint-Tropez to devote herself to the protection of animals with the same passion with which she once devoted herself to cinema and men. Brigitte Bardot is a woman who could never - and would never - do otherwise. This Saturday (September 28, 2024) she will be 90 years old.
She has hardly changed, only her long mane has turned gray and she can no longer bend down because her bones crack, as she recently revealed in an interview with "Le Monde". But she still has the same mindset as before.
She has neither changed her opinions nor her particular way of looking at things, as she went on to explain. Despite her age and the two canes she walks with: "When you complain, it annoys everyone and it doesn't ease the pain. That's why I never complain and live normally like I did when I was younger, just with disabilities."
Rise to film icon status with a lascivious swing of the hips
95 minutes were enough to make her a global star in 1956. In the film "Et Dieu créa la femme", directed by Roger Vadim, she plays Juliette, a sensual young woman who thirsts for freedom and is desired by three men. At the time, Brigitte Bardot was only in her early twenties, still a brunette, but had already appeared in ten films.
She dyed her hair blonde, danced the mambo with lewd hip movements and lolled lasciviously in the sands of Saint-Tropez. Her role as a seductive woman made her a worldwide sensation overnight - and a sex symbol. Her performances triggered hysteria and mass gatherings.
In a France where dancing barefoot was already a minor scandal, she broke the boundaries of what had previously been possible for women on screen: for the first time in cinema, a woman expressed her physical desires on an equal footing with a man.
The movie was a slap in the face for an entire nation. Scenes were censored and the good bourgeoisie insulted her as a whore. But for many French women, "BB", as she is still called today, became a role model. She herself simply found the movie funny. She improvised the mambo completely, she told the newspaper "La Croix" years later.
New image of women with self-determined femininity
With films such as "La vérité" (1960), "Le mépris" (1963) and "Viva Maria!" (1965), she not only wrote film history. BB, who came from a conservative family, created a new image of women with her self-determined femininity and eroticism. Female beauty was suddenly allowed to be sexy and self-confident.
She unabashedly revealed her dream body to the greedy lenses of the photographers. She changed lovers and husbands without restraint. While Vadim was filming "Et Dieu créa la femme" with her, she began a relationship with film partner Jean-Louis Trintignant.
She was also in a relationship with Serge Gainsbourg, the "enfant terrible" of French chanson, for some time. Together they moaned the scandalous song "Je t'aime moi non plus" into the microphone. However, she never wanted to be appropriated as a feminist. She had nothing to do with the whole movement, as she emphasized in the interview with "La Croix".
Breaking one taboo after another
On January 11, 1960, at the age of 25, she gave birth to her only son Nicolas. A nightmare for the actress, which she described without complexes in her memoirs "Initiales B.B", published in 1996. When the baby was placed on her stomach and she was told it was a boy, she pushed him away. She would have preferred to give birth to a small dog, she wrote.
Bardot wanted to have an abortion - as she had with her two previous pregnancies. But this time no doctor agreed and the child's father, actor Jacques Charrier, did not want an abortion, which was still being prosecuted at the time. Three years after his birth, Nicolas was officially entrusted to his father.
The actress later explained that she was unable to raise her son because she was looking for support herself. She needed a shoulder, a root, as she is quoted in the documentary "Brigitte Bardot, confidentiel".
Radical retreat to the villa in Saint-Tropez
In 1973, at the height of her fame, after more than 40 films and numerous songs, Bardot radically withdrew from the public eye and took refuge in her villa La Madrague in Saint-Tropez. She was not yet forty. She explained her decision by saying that the life she was leading was pointless and superficial. "It was a martyrdom", she wrote in her autobiography "Tears of Struggle" (2018).
She dedicated herself to the fight against seal hunting, animal testing and cruel slaughter methods with the same uncompromising attitude that characterized her career. For half a century, she has made her fight against animal cruelty her life's purpose. In 1986, she founded the animal welfare organization Fondation Brigitte Bardot, which is still active today. She even sold a large part of her property for this purpose.
Convicted several times for racist remarks
In addition to her commitment to animal welfare, Bardot has repeatedly caused a stir with her political statements. Her sympathies for the extreme right and her sometimes racist statements have earned her several convictions. She called for the election of Marine Le Pen and was critical of immigrants and Islamic slaughter.
Her harsh and often radical views met with widespread criticism, but Bardot always remained true to herself. She repeatedly emphasized that she said what she thought - regardless of whether others liked it or not.
Bardot never conformed to social expectations and always lived her own definition of freedom - whether as an actress, rebellious sex symbol or militant animal rights activist.