French actress turned animal-rights campaigner. Born into a well-off family in Paris's 16th arrondissement, she was educated at private schools and trained as a dancer at the Paris Conservatoire. Originally a brunette, she later adopted the wild blonde tresses that became her signature.
At 15 she appeared on the cover of Elle magazine, despite her parents' disapproval. She began an affair with Roger Vadim, an assistant to a film director, at 17, and married him at 18. He found early parts for her. She was mobbed at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival. Vadim then directed her in "And God Created Woman" (1956), which made her an international sensation. Paris Match called her "immoral from head to toe".
Bardot made nearly 50 films, mostly comedy dramas. Her best-known roles included "Babette Goes to War" (a comic French resistance story), "Viva Maria!" (opposite Jeanne Moreau as a Central American stripper-cum-revolutionary) and "La Verite" (1960), the only film she herself rated, a murder mystery in which she acted with her hair pulled back. She retired from cinema in 1973 at the age of 39.
She was declared as great a product of France as Roquefort cheese and Bordeaux wine. In the 1960s she became the official face of Marianne, the symbol of France. French intellectuals, particularly female ones, declared that she represented unloosed free will in the face of the tyrannical male gaze. Her fame transformed St Tropez, a sleepy fishing port on the Riviera where she lived from 1958, into a magnet for opulence and glitter.
Bardot married four times; the first three marriages lasted only a few years each. She had at least as many long-lasting affairs, usually with fellow actors. She attempted suicide several times, over lovers' arguments or casting disputes. She had one son, Nicolas, by her second husband, Jacques Charrier. Her fourth husband, whom she married in 1996, was a figure of the French far right.
After retiring from film, Bardot devoted herself to animal welfare. She sold all her jewellery to establish the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, which built shelters for abused donkeys, horses and bears around the world. She campaigned against Canada's annual seal cull, factory-farming of chickens, wolf-hunting, bullfighting and the fur trade. She rebuked the French for eating horse meat. At one point she lived with 14 dogs, 60 cats and a herd of goats, which wandered freely in her villa in St Tropez and shared her meals and bed.
Bardot castigated Jews and Muslims for their methods of slaughter and inveighed against Muslims generally as savages and invaders. She was convicted five times under France's anti-racism laws. She was also publicly hostile to "butt-jiggling" gay men and the #MeToo movement.
Bardot died on December 28th 2025, aged 91.
Never reveal your best argument.