Myth and symbol of sex of the 1950s and 1960s, priestess and muse of the greatest artists of the time, emblem of female emancipation and sexual liberation.
Free spirit, with the challenge in her blood, the Brigitte Bardot brought a revolution in morals, passing from a woman-child to a femme fatale.
With 48 films to her credit and more than 80 songs in her 21-year career, Brigitte Bardot, also known for her initials, BB ("Baby"), is one of the most famous French artists in the world.
Brigitte Ann-Marie Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 in Paris, France.
She discovers early on her inclination to dance and studies ballet. Her mother encourages her to pursue a modeling career. At the age of 15, she posed on the cover of the French magazine Elle (1949), enchanting everyone with her flawless beauty.
On March 8, 1950, she was to meet the man who would make her a star. Rose Vadim saw the face of the then teenager Bardot on the cover of "Elle" magazine and knew exactly what she had to do.
Vadim, then 21, worked as an assistant to director Marc Allegre. She showed him the magazine and suggested they use the model in the movie. Allegre did not want to be convinced. After all, who could resist her beauty? So he asked his 21-year-old assistant to find her and convince her and he gladly accepted.
The two young people fell in love and a few years later, when Bardot turned 18, they were united by the sacred bonds of marriage.
Bardot knew from the beginning that this man was her ticket to escape from her strict family but also to conquer the world.
Vadim, for his part, was first Bardot manager and then husband. He had realized the value of the beautiful young woman and had decided to make people talk or rather talk about her.
In 1952 he secured her the leading role in the film "Manina, the naked treasure".
Bardot was posing as the "naked treasure" dressed in a revealing bikini. By 1956, her name was associated with sexy comedies, but she was not yet a world-famous actress.
With the film "And God Created Woman" in 1956, Bardot entered the pantheon of world cinema. It became an international symbol of sex and every man's fantasy.
The advanced love scenes of the time and the bold nudity of Bardot, in the sensual dynamics of the film, would make the film very popular among the cinephiles of the time and the most brilliant star.
Light blonde long hair, eyes accentuated with black eye-liner, dyed lips, sexy and fitted clothes, tights, skirts, wide belts, jeans, T-shirt, bikini.
The myth of "Baby" has been created and causes delirium in its passage. Celebrities such as François Nourisier, Marguerite Diras, and Simone de Beauvoir show interest in her and dedicate entire articles to her.
Bardot represented the young, liberated and fatal woman, who had no moral hesitation to appear naked in her films but also to pursue love outside of marriage.
During the filming of "And God Created Woman", Bardot had an affair with her co-star, Jean-Louis Trentinian. Tragic irony, it was her husband Rose Vadim who urged them to come closer to, she says, their interpretation being more realistic. In 1957, Bardot left Vadim for her new lover, actor Jacques Sarrier.
They married in 1959 and had a son, Nicholas. When the child came, Bardot was in the middle of the cinema, and not even a thought crossed her mind to leave the glamorous life to dedicate herself to motherhood.
She left her son to her husband's parents, something that infuriated the society of the time. They were ready to accept a sexually liberated woman, but not a woman who abandoned her child to live a carefree life. Bardot said she did not feel ready to do so mother and she never regretted her decision.
"I was punching my stomach and asking my doctor for morphine. I could not stand the sight of my body when I was pregnant. As if I had a cancerous tumor inside me, which was flying and damaging my shapely body. Many times I wished I had given birth to a puppy, rather than a baby ", she writes in an excerpt from her biography, for which she was asked to compensate her son and her ex-husband with 28.000 dollars for moral damages caused to the life of Nikola's child because of characterizations she attributed to him through her book.
The actress's lawyer defended her, claiming that the period to which his client refers, Nikola was a fetus. So how can you cause moral damage to an unborn creature?
The "goddess" Brigitte, has admitted in many interviews that she never believed in blood ties. Her son grew up with his father and she saw him twice a year. When he got married and started his own family, he never saw them, because he chose to keep her away from his wife and children.
Men coveted her and women envied her or sought to look like her. In 1960, during the filming of "La Verité", on the day of her 26th birthday, Bardot will suicide attempt with pills, which fortunately will not work.
Years later, the actress will reveal how nightmarish all this glamor and publicity had made her life.
"I am a woman like everyone else, I have a nose and a mouth, I have feelings and thoughts, but my life becomes unbearable. My soul no longer belongs to me. For me, the ventilator is a showcase. I can not live as I wish. My existence is just underground. Yes, I want to feel the fresh air of my house, I can not open the window, because there will be a photographer sitting on the roof opposite. "There are many things in my life that I can not say belong to me," she said.
In 1972, at the age of 38, he decided to retire from the show business and dedicate himself to animal welfare activism. And the truth is that 'say it and do it'. He never really returned to the big screen. He devoted himself to activism and animal welfare, founded an animal welfare association and married a former adviser to Le Pen's far-right party.
"I never liked the noise, I hated the noise. I hate scandals. I was just honest in "I want" and in my truth "were her words before the end of her career. She expressed her support for the president of the far-right National Front, Marin Lepen, in 2012.
Bardot has been repeatedly accused of racist statements and has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation.
At 86, she lives in her villa in Saint-Tropez with dozens of cats and dogs.