Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot (born 28 September 1934) is a former French fashion model, actress, singer and animal rights activist. She was one of the best-known sex symbols of the 1960s. Starting in 1969, Bardot's features became the official face of Marianne (who had previously been anonymous) to represent the liberty of France.
Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer in early life. She started her acting career in 1952 and, after appearing in 16 films, became world-famous due to her role in her then-husband Roger Vadim's controversial film And God Created Woman. She later starred in Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film Le Mépris. Bardot was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress for her role in Louis Malle's 1965 film Viva Maria!. Bardot caught the attention of French intellectuals. She was the subject of Simone de Beauvoir's 1959 essay, The Lolita Syndrome, which described Bardot as a "locomotive of women's history" and built upon existentialist themes to declare her the first and most liberated woman of post-war France.
Bardot retired from the entertainment industry in 1973. During her career in show business, Bardot starred in 47 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. She was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1985, but refused to receive it. After her retirement, Bardot established herself as an animal rights activist. During the 1990s, she generated controversy by criticizing immigration, Islamisation and Islam in France, and has been fined five times for "inciting racial hatred".
Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris to Anne-Marie 'Toty' Mucel (1912–1978) and Louis 'Pilou' Bardot (1896–1975). Her father had an engineering degree and worked with his own father (Charles Bardot) in the family business. Toty was sixteen years younger and they married in 1933. Bardot grew up in a middle-class observant Roman Catholic family. Brigitte's mother enrolled Brigitte and her sister Marie-Jeanne (born 5 May 1938) in dance. Marie-Jeanne eventually gave up dancing lessons to complete her education, whereas Brigitte decided to concentrate on a ballet career.
In 1947, Bardot was accepted to the Conservatoire de Paris, and for three years she attended the ballet classes of Russian choreographer Boris Knyazev. (One of her classmates was Leslie Caron; fellow ballerinas nicknamed Bardot: Bichette [Little Doe]).
At the invitation of an acquaintance of her mother, she modelled in a fashion show in 1949. In the same year, she modelled for a fashion magazine "Jardin des Modes" managed by journalist Hélène Lazareff. Aged 15, she appeared on an 8 March 1950 cover of ELLE and was noticed by a young film director, Roger Vadim, while babysitting. He showed an issue of the magazine to director and screenwriter Marc Allégret who offered Bardot the opportunity to audition for "Les lauriers sont coupés" thereafter. Although Bardot got the role, the film was cancelled, but it made her consider becoming an actress. Moreover, her acquaintance with Vadim, who attended the audition, influenced her further life and career.
Bardot expressed support for President Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s. Her husband Bernard d'Ormale is a former adviser of the Front National, the main nationalist party in France. Brigitte Bardot is supporting Front National candidate Marine Le Pen in the 2012 French Presidential Election.
In her 1999 book Le Carré de Pluton ("Pluto's Square"), Bardot criticizes the procedure used in the ritual slaughter of sheep during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. Additionally, in a section in the book entitled, "Open Letter to My Lost France", Bardot writes that "my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims". For this comment, a French court fined her 30,000 francs in June 2000. She had been fined in 1997 for the original publication of this open letter in Le Figaro and again 1998 for making similar remarks.
In her 2003 book, Un cri dans le silence ("A Scream in the Silence"), she warned of an “Islamicisation of France”, and said of Muslim immigration:
Over the last twenty years, we have given in to a subterranean, dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration, which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own.
In May 2003 the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP) announced they would sue Bardot for the comments. The "Ligue des droits de l'homme" (Human Rights League) announced they were considering similar legal proceedings.
In the book, she also made comparisons of her close gay friends to today's homosexuals, who "jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air and with their little castrato voices moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through" and that some contemporary homosexuals behave like "fairground freaks". In her own defence, Bardot wrote in a letter to a French gay magazine: "Apart from my husband—who maybe will cross over one day as well—I am entirely surrounded by homos. For years, they have been my support, my friends, my adopted children, my confidants." Bardot's book was also against miscegenation; made attacks on modern art, which Bardot equated with "shit"; drew similarities between French politicians and weather vanes; and compared her own beliefs with previous generations who had "given their lives to push out invaders".
On 10 June 2004, Bardot was again convicted by a French court for "inciting racial hatred" and fined €5,000, the fourth such conviction and fine from a French court. Bardot denied the racial hatred charge and apologized in court, saying: "I never knowingly wanted to hurt anybody. It is not in my character."
In 2008, Bardot was convicted of inciting racial/religious hatred in relation to a letter she wrote, a copy of which she sent to Nicolas Sarkozy when he was Interior Minister of France. The letter stated her objections to Muslims in France ritually slaughtering sheep by slitting their throats without anesthetizing them first but also said, in reference to Muslims, that she was "fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its habits". The trial concluded on 3 June 2008, with a conviction and fine of €15,000, the largest of her fines to date. The prosecutor stated that she was tired of charging Bardot with offences related to racial hatred.
During the 2008 United States presidential election, she branded the Republican Party vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as "stupid" and a "disgrace to women". She criticized the former governor of Alaska for her stance on global warming and gun control. She was also offended by Palin's support for Arctic oil exploration and for her lack of consideration in protecting polar bears.
On 13 August 2010, Bardot lashed out at director Kyle Newman regarding his plans to make a biographical film on her life. Her response was, "Wait until I'm dead before you make a movie about my life!". Bardot warned Newman that if the project progresses "sparks will fly".
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