Brigitte Bardot obituary: French star who redefined female sexuality on screen

Brigitte Bardot, who died aged 91 in Saint-Tropez, was a legendary star of French cinema. A compelling erotic presence and a global celebrity of the post-war era, she was adulated by her fans and pursued by paparazzi, but was also, in equal measure, the object of violent hostility. Such polarised reactions reflect the social and cultural impact of her transgressive persona. Bardot caused a veritable revolution in the representation of women and female desire in the conservative and patriarchal 1950s and early 60s.

Bardot was a child of the affluent Parisian bourgeoisie, whose parents had artistic leanings. The lithe and spectacularly beautiful young Bardot studied ballet but soon abandoned a dancing career. Her elegant mother’s connections in haute couture led to Bardot becoming an adolescent model for fashion magazines. Her appearance on the cover of Elle on 8 May 1950 famously caused director Marc Allégret and his assistant Roger Vadim to call her for an audition. Bardot and Vadim fell in love and married in 1952, when she was 18. 

It is through her father, though, that she made her first film, Crazy for Love, the same year. Sixteen films followed, mostly light comedies, in which – though the importance of her parts grew – she was getting average starlet recognition. Until, that is, her breakthrough with Vadim’s first film, And God Created Woman, which caused a commotion when it came out in December 1956 (contrary to a tenacious legend that the film was ignored in France). It then acquired a powerful international aura of scandal after its American release in September 1957, when clerics called for its banning. A publicity tag ran, “and God created woman… but the devil invented Brigitte Bardot”.

The extraordinary impact of And God Created Woman, partly shot on location in Saint-Tropez, is largely down to Bardot. Her character, Juliette, is an orphan whose sex-appeal wreaks havoc among local men, including an ageing playboy (Curt Jürgens), local hunk Antoine (Christian Marquand) and his younger brother Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant). But beyond the cliché plot, she is a uniquely modern figure. First, she is not just a ‘sex bomb’ for the male gaze – though she is that too with her slim but voluptuous body, long blonde hair and celebrated pout – but a young woman who expresses her own sexual desire, as depicted in a scene where, on their wedding day, she and Michel make love instead of joining the wedding lunch, to the parents’ outrage. Secondly, Juliette’s sexual appetite is depicted as natural, neither vulgar nor excessive (in 1956, sexually-active women in film were either ‘sluts’ or ‘nymphomaniacs’). And thirdly, Bardot’s nonchalant performance and pert verbal delivery project a natural, ‘non acting’ style and joyful impertinence, reinforcing the equation between the actress and the character (she was criticised in some quarters for her ‘bad acting’).

From And God Created Woman onwards, Bardot became a star and a celebrity on an unprecedented scale, a ‘phénomène de société’ endlessly scrutinised, photographed and discussed in what was termed Bardomania. All her films became star vehicles, including box-office hits such as La Parisienne (1957), Babette Goes to War (1959), Please, Not Now! (1961) and Viva Maria! (1965). These were mostly comedies where she was often reduced to playing variations on the ‘dumb blonde’. She also made forays into Tradition of Quality melodramas, notably Love Is My Profession (1958) and La Vérité (1960), while New Wave directors Louis Malle and Jean-Luc Godard made films about her rather than with her: respectively, A Very Private Affair (1962) and Le Mépris (1963). 

But Bardot’s celebrity went beyond her films, anticipating celebrity culture by decades. Eminent writers, journalists and photographers were obsessed with her private life, including her lovers, many of whom were co-stars (including Trintignant, as her marriage to Vadim broke down at the time of And God Created Woman), her subsequent marriages to Jacques Charrier in 1959, Gunther Sachs in 1966 and Bernard d’Ormale in 1992, and her difficult relationship to motherhood. Her son with Charrier, Nicolas, was born on 11 January 1960 while her flat besieged by journalists and paparazzi. She had reluctantly become a mother, pressurised by husband and family and unable to obtain an abortion. He was mostly cared for by his father’s family. This departure from conventional norms of femininity led to her being criticised as a ‘bad mother’ at the time and later, when she described the nightmare of the birth, boldly comparing the embryo to a tumour, in her autobiography Initiales B.B. (1996), a book that Jacques and Nicolas Charrier tried (unsuccessfully) to ban, and incidentally a fascinating document on French cinema and stardom.

Bardot’s star image was founded on the combination of sex appeal, naturalness and, crucially, youth. The term ‘sex kitten’ was supposedly invented for her, and Simone de Beauvoir in 1959 wrote about “Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita syndrome”. The importance of youth to Bardot (whose initials B.B. spell bébé [baby] in French) explains why she decided in 1973, at the age of 39, to give up her film career. Against the rise of pornography, she also perceived that her role as a sexual pioneer was over. 

Having retired from filmmaking – which she had never particularly enjoyed – she devoted the rest of her life, as well as her personal fortune, to the cause of animal welfare, creating the Fondation Brigitte Bardot in 1985. Her battles included protesting the killing of baby seals, fur clothing and halal slaughter methods; about the latter she made controversial statements and was accused of racism – aggravated by the fact that she (and her fourth husband) were supporters of the far-right National Front (now National Rally). Making bold, brazen statements was always part of her identity and more recently she joined the ranks of French female celebrities who openly criticised the #MeToo movement.

Whatever Bardot’s activities and public positions since 1973, as a star of the 1950s and 60s, she remains a towering figure of French cinema. In addition to her films, her abundant blonde hair, her clothes, her voice (she also had a successful singing career) were adored by many and widely imitated by generations of ‘ordinary’ women as well as other stars. Her love of the beach at her house La Madrague at Saint-Tropez, until it became a nightmare of overtourism, made her a figurehead of the hedonistic new leisure society. 

Bardot was always critical of feminism as a movement but as an individual she was a powerful role model. As de Beauvoir wrote, “in the game of love, she is the hunter as much as the prey”. Notoriously, she attempted suicide on more than one occasion, notably in September 1960 when the pressures of celebrity became too much; yet unlike her contemporary Marilyn Monroe, she was resilient enough to live to the ripe old age of 91. Beyond the controversies, she attained the status of a national monument, posing for the statue of Marianne, the symbol of the Republic, in 1969. To reprise Marguerite Duras’s words, hurrah for Queen Bardot!

• Brigitte Bardot, 28 September 1934 to 28 December 2025