Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (Contempt) in 1963. Photograph: Nana Productions/Rex Features Brigitte Bardot in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (Contempt) in 1963. Photograph: Nana Productions/Rex Features Brigitte Bardot, the French actor and singer who became an international sex symbol before turning her back on the film industry and embracing the cause of animal rights activism and far-right politics, has died aged 91. Paying tribute to Bardot on Sunday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, wrote on social media that France was mourning “a legend of the century”. “Her films, her voice, her dazzling glory … her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom,” Macron said. Bardot’s death, at her Saint-Tropez home, La Madrague, on the French Riviera, was announced by her foundation. “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,” it said. Her cause of death was not made public. Bardot was briefly hospitalised in October for what her office called a “minor” procedure. The town hall in Saint-Tropez, where Bardot had holidayed as a child and where she later shot the film And God Created Woman, said the actor had “helped make Saint-Tropez shine across the world”. The town said Bardot was its “most radiant ambassador” and part of “the collective memory of Saint-Tropez, which we must preserve”. Bardot shot to international fame in 1956 with And God Created Woman, written and directed by her then husband, Roger Vadim, and for the next two decades was said to have embodied the idea of the archetypal “sex kitten”. In the early 1970s, however, she announced her retirement from acting and became an outspoken campaigner on animal rights, and increasingly active politically on the far right. Jordan Bardella, the president of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party (RN), which Bardot supported, wrote: “Brigitte Bardot was a woman of heart, conviction and character. An ardent patriot, devoted to animals that she protected throughout her life, she embodied a whole French era, but also above all a certain idea of courage and freedom.” Le Pen, whom Bardot once described as “the Joan of Arc of the 21st century”, wrote on social media that Bardot was “exceptional for her talent, courage, frankness and beauty”. “She was incredibly French,” she said. “Free, indomitable, whole. She will be hugely missed.” Such was Bardot’s role in the far right’s cultural pantheon that tributes were also paid to her from Italy’s government, where the deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, called her “a timeless star, but above all a woman who was free, nonconformist, protagonist of courageous battles in defence of our traditions”. The Italian culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, said: “Brigitte Bardot was not only one of the great protagonists of world cinema, but also an extraordinary interpreter of western fundamental freedoms.” He said she “resolutely defended her vision of cultural and social values and civic engagement”. But it was Vadim’s And God Created Woman, in which Bardot played an uninhibited teenager in Saint-Tropez, that consolidated her image and turned her into an international icon. The film was a huge hit in France, as well as internationally, and catapulted Bardot into the front rank of French screen performers. As well as for cinema audiences, Bardot swiftly became an inspiration for intellectuals and artists ; not least the young John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who demanded their then girlfriends dye their hair blond in imitation of her. The columnist Raymond Cartier wrote a lengthy article about “le cas Bardot” in Paris-Match in 1958, while Simone de Beauvoir published her famous essay Brigitte Bardot and the Loli