Brigitte Bardot died, she was 91 years old: eternal icon of beauty in cinema who became the champion of animals

In the end, it was more the complaints of the hunters that chased her than her fans. Strange nemesis for someone who had been the most desired woman for at least a couple of decades, but evidently the fate of Brigitte Bardot was not to go unnoticed, neither as an actress nor as an activist for animals. Deep down, he said, «I always thought that I would make films just to buy a farm to raise animals.

Like Snow White, surrounded by birds, deer and squirrels” and so, now that she is no longer here, passed away at the age of 91 on 28 December 2025his “legacy” will be divided between around sixty films and a Foundation which was able to collect 15 million euros in donations every year and which contributed to saving thousands of animals.

An unthinkable epilogue for the sixteen-year-old Parisian (she was born on 28 September 1934) who in 1950, from the pages of «Elle», attracted the attention of Marc Allégret: his assistant, Roger Vadim, is in charge of contacting her for an audition. The girl studies dance but the meeting with Vadim makes her head spin: she will have to wait until she turns eighteen to marry him, on 21 December 1952 (her father, Louis Bardot, head of the chemical factories Bardotdoes not compromise), but with him it is cinema that has entered his life.
The inevitable mess of small and very small parts (The Norman Hole, 1952 is the debut film which will be followed, among others, Helen of Troy, 1955, where the title role is for Rossana Podestà and she is the least known Andraste; Your eyes are burning1955, who lets her sensuality explode on screen for the first time; My son Nero1956, in the shoes of Poppea next to Deaf – Nero) and then the explosion: Too many like it (Italian title unnecessarily allusive for the most insightful And God… created woman, 1956), is a portrait without veils – neither physical nor moral – of a young woman who discovers the charm she exerts on men, where Brigitte Bardot (which the advertising launch summarizes for the first time in BB: «God created woman… and the devil created BB», we read on the posters) is directed by her Pygmalion husband Vadim.

The film, forbidden to children under 16, is not a success (it cost 140 million old francs and grossed only 60) and at home it is defended almost exclusively by the young editors of «Cahiers du cinéma”, Truffaut and Godard in the head. But a few months later, the triumph in the United States also opened the eyes of the French: praised across the Atlantic, BB it becomes for everyone the symbol of a generation that wants to free itself from any sense of guilt or sin and that lives its body (and its sexuality) with a naturalness and boldness that was unthinkable only a short time ago.
The film marks the end of her marriage to Vadim (through the “fault” of the co-protagonist Jean-Louis Trintignant) but definitively launches BB into the sky of the stars: it is “the eighth wonder of the world” according to Elvis Presley. And not only that: Simone de Beauvoir sees in its “immorality” the strength of women determined to reclaim their sexual autonomy, Marguerite Duras speaks of her as the “unconfessed aspiration of every male human being”, “Life” writes that “after the Statue of Liberty, no other French woman has shed as much light on the United States”.

E Alessandra Mattirolo in the beautiful book he wrote about her with Milena Gabanelli, says that «in the France of the 1950s, Brigitte opposes existentialist apathy, the legacies of the culture of anguish, the slavery of thought. Its animal vitality wants to impose natural, direct sensations, not mediated by intellectualism.”It is inevitable that it becomes the object of obsessive curiosity: the photographers immediately hunted her down relentlessly, going as far as renting the apartment in front of the house to steal a few shots or remaining crouched in the trees which allow them to spy on her inside her good laugh in Saint Tropez, La Madrague. And she spares nothing to avoid gossip and inferences.

The list of lovers and husbands never ends: after Vadem and Trentignant’s the time to Gilbert Bécaud, from Raf Vallonna and Saacha Dishaca. In 1959 he married Jacques Charrier, who will give him his only son, Nicolas (more accepted than truly loved) but divorces in 1963. Then he becomes involved with Samy Frey, to the singer Olivier Despaxto the manufacturer Bob Zaguriuntil he meets Gunter Sachs who becomes her third husband (but only for three years, from 1966 to ’69), without denying herself other stories: with Serge Gainsbourgwith the Italian playboy Gigi Rizziwith the young man Patrick Gilles, con Warren Beatty, Nino Ferrerthe racing drivero François Cevert, the barman Christian Kalt de Méribelk, Laurent Vergez, the sculptor Miroslav Brozek the journalist Alain Bougrain-Dubourg and finally the lawyer (and exponent of the National Front of Le Pen) Bernard d’Ormalewhom she married in 1992 and with whom the actress has since shared the rest of her life.

Meanwhile, BB’s career continues: in 1958 he faces one of the sacred monsters of French cinema, Jean Gabin, who wants to seduce into The girl of sin; in 1960 it is Henri-George Clouzot to lay bare (not without tension on set) her character as a “girl of free morals” with The truth while the president De Gaulle compares the impact of its image – swaddled in tight trousers and tight T-shirts – to the value it exports Renault had on the trade balance. It was almost inevitable then that in 1970 she was chosen to give shape to the Marianne, the symbol of the French nation. However, Brigitte is not always able to handle the weight of such popularity and the ruthless hunt of photojournalists: on her twenty-sixth birthday she even attempted suicide and the following year she found herself leading the ranking of the “worst actress in the world”, but by now she had become a worldwide myth (in 1965, she was called to Hollywood to play herself in Erasmus the Freckled, alongside James Stewart) and Louis Malle transfigures its destiny into Privacy (1962), a kind of apotheosis in honor of an authentic goddess. Also Godard he wants it for Contempt, often naked next to Michel Piccoli, in a film that highlights the “pout” that increasingly obscures her beauty.

However, the proposals she receives are not always so stimulating and even if they ask her to pair up with famous actresses (with Jeanne Moreau in Long live Mary!, 1965, with Claudia Cardinale in Le gunners, 1971) the love for cinema seems to fade, temporarily supplanted by the passion for music thanks to the meeting with Serge Gainsbourg. Thus comes the time to definitively retire from the scene (the last film, very forgettable, is Colinot the petticoat lifter1973) to dedicate herself to that passion for animal rights that she had always cultivated (at the beginning of the 1960s she was already a vegetarian and had spoken out against mistreatment in slaughterhouses) and which led her to create the Brigitte Bardot Foundation. The controversies, however, do not abandon him: for his positions in favor of the right (in the 2017 ballot he openly supported Marine Le Pen against Macron)for her declarations against certain Islamic traditions (such as the slaughter of sheep) so much so that she was condemned for “incitement to racial hatred” and, recently, for her attacks on hunters who are “destroyers of lives”. The BB myth definitely cannot fade.

December 28, 2025 (changed December 28, 2025 | 11:27)

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