Brigitte Bardot, the French film star whose image helped define mid-20th-century celebrity and later reshaped her public life around animal rights activism, has died. She was 91.
ABC News has confirmed that Bardot died on Sunday, December 28, at her home in southern France, according to Bruno Jacquelin of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation. No cause of death was provided. She had been hospitalized last month, and funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.
Bardot rose to international fame in the 1950s with her breakout role in And God Created Woman, the 1956 film directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim. The movie’s provocative tone and Bardot’s screen presence ignited controversy and made her an instant global figure. Over the next decade, her tousled blonde hair, relaxed sensuality, and defiant attitude became shorthand for a France moving away from postwar restraint.
At the height of her fame, Bardot appeared in nearly 30 films and became so culturally embedded that, in 1969, her likeness was chosen as the model for Marianne, the symbolic female embodiment of the French Republic.
Bardot stepped away from acting in 1973, retiring at just 39. What followed was a second act that proved as headline-grabbing as her film career. She devoted herself almost entirely to animal protection, eventually founding the Brigitte Bardot Foundation. She campaigned against seal hunting, animal testing, and the use of animals in entertainment, often traveling or writing directly to world leaders to press her cause.
“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot said in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory… in the face of an animal that suffers.”
Her activism earned recognition, including France’s Legion of Honor in 1985, but it was also controversial. Bardot was repeatedly fined in France for statements deemed to incite racial hatred, particularly in connection with her opposition to Muslim ritual slaughter practices. Her political views increasingly aligned with France’s far-right, a shift that distanced her from parts of the public that once embraced her.
Born Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot in Paris in 1934, she trained as a ballet dancer before being discovered as a teenager. Despite her global fame, Bardot often spoke candidly about her discomfort with celebrity, citing relentless media attention and the personal struggles that followed her rise.
In later years, she lived quietly in Saint-Tropez, largely removed from public life but unwavering in her advocacy.
