From Sex Appeal to the Far Right, Brigitte Bardot Symbolized a Changing France

The actress, singer and activist Brigitte Bardot, who has died at 91, personified France in a literal way: In 1969, she became the first celebrity to be used as the model for Marianne, the symbol of the Republic that has adorned the country’s City Halls as well as official documents, stamps and coins since the French Revolution. Just over a year earlier, she had kicked off her TV special “Le Show Bardot,” wearing little besides thigh-high boots and a French flag, as the national anthem played and then quickly morphed into a peppy new pop tune.

B.B., as she was known, was a new France: bold, free and unconventional.

Yet Bardot wasn’t a consensual figure. You might even say she was among the first problematic stars of the modern era: Admired and reviled in turns, or even simultaneously, she was a star accused of being a bad actress, a cranky, unfiltered misanthrope doubling as an emblem of modernity and liberation, and a tireless crusader for animal rights who cottoned to the far-right National Front and was convicted multiple times for “inciting racial hatred.”

Bardot did not need anyone to cancel her, though: In a way, she did it herself, quitting acting in 1973 before she turned 40. Unlike many star retirements before and since, this one stuck. Many may argue that this left her with enough time on her hands to get in trouble, but for better or for worse, she wanted agency, and she got it.

Long before she became Marianne, Bardot carried an even heavier burden: She was synonymous with womanhood itself. After all, the movie that made her a star in her early 20s was the melodrama “And God Created Woman,” in 1956.

Under the direction of her then-husband, Roger Vadim, Bardot unleashed a sultry, unapologetic sensuality that made it feel as if she had suddenly opened wide France’s windows and let in a bracing gust of fresh air. Writing in The New York Times in 2018, A.O. Scott described the film as “a watershed in the cinematic history of sex, sunshine and a certain image of France.”

And this being France, it did not take long for Bardot to attract the attention of the intellectual and literary sets. Marguerite Duras wrote an article under the headline “Queen Bardot” in 1958. The following year, Simone de Beauvoir wrote a piece headlined “Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome” for Esquire, an admiring article that mentioned the young actress’s love for animals and ended with the thought: “I hope that she will not resign herself to insignificance in order to gain popularity. I hope she will mature, but not change.”

After her breakthrough in 1956, Bardot was propelled into a whirlwind megastardom that she would never feel comfortable with. She was hounded by paparazzi, multiplied affairs and marriages in a quest for love, and made movies at a frenzied pace.

In her essay “Brigitte Bardot or the ‘Problem’ of Women’s Comedy,” the scholar Ginette Vincendeau pointed out that the attention surrounding Bardot tended to focus on her sex appeal, but that most of her hits were comedies, starting with “Naughty Girl” in 1956, that benefited from her playful naturalism and energy, and the way she subverted the stereotype of the “dumb blonde.”

While those films tended to be box-office gold, Bardot also successfully ventured into more serious fare, most notably Henri-Georges Clouzot’s noirish drama “The Truth” (1960) and Jean-Luc Godard’s intoxicating paean to cinema, “Contempt” (1963).

The 1960s were Bardot’s decade. In addition to her cinematic activities, she released her first single, “Sidonie,” in 1962 (it was featured in her first film with Louis Malle, “A Very Private Affair”) and then went on to build an impressive discography marked by nonchalant, bemused, piquant performances. A TV special that aired on Jan. 1, 1968 immediately acquired cult status, bolstered by imaginatively staged versions of new Serge Gainsbourg songs like “Comic Strip,” “Bonnie & Clyde” and “Harley Davidson.”

The French sociologist and philosopher Edgar Morin wrote in his book “The Stars” (1972) that Bardot had “admirable qualities of extreme innocence and extreme eroticism,” a paradox that made her intriguing. She had a reputation for being sexually brazen, for example, but she asked Gainsbourg not to release their steamy duet “Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus,” which they had recorded in 1967 when they were having an affair. He obliged, and then rerecorded it in 1969 with another paramour, Jane Birkin, and it became a hit. (The Bardot version finally came out in 1986.)

She was so fond of singing that she lingered in that career after she stopped making films: Her last single, “Toutes Les Bêtes Sont à Aimer” (“All Animals Are to Be Loved”), came out in 1982, about a decade after she withdrew from cinema.

The decisive moment came when she was making what would turn out to be her last feature, “The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot” (1973). She had noticed that one of the extras had a small goat, and learned that goat was destined for a barbecue. Horrified, Bardot bought the animal — an episode that she later said had compelled her to turn from acting to animal rights campaigning.

In a 1994 interview with The New York Times, Bardot said she had always loved animals: “But when I was making films, I discovered there was a difference between loving animals and fighting for them — and I didn’t have time to fight for them. So that’s why I gave up cinema. I stopped making films to look after animals.”

She holed up in the Mediterranean town of St.-Tropez, where she had two properties, one of which was famous from her song “La Madrague.” From there, she dedicated herself full time to a kind of radicalism not often displayed by celebrities.

“I only live in the world of animal protection,” she said in the 1994 interview. “I speak only of that. I think only of that. I am obsessed.” And not much else seemed to matter — in 1986, she helped finance the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, an animal protection nonprofit, by selling many of her belongings.

As the decades went by, Bardot became as famous for her politics as she once had been for her career. She regularly gave interviews and opined freely, usually to bemoan the state of the world in general and her own country in particular.

She believed, for example, that only the political right — all the way to the extremes of the National Front and its successor, the National Rally — could save a decadent France. Earlier this year, she expressed support for Gérard Depardieu and Nicolas Bedos, who have both been convicted of sexual assault. Among the French luminaries who mourned her on Sunday was the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who said Bardot “was quintessentially French: free-spirited, indomitable, uncompromising. We will miss her dearly.”

In a phone interview with Le Monde newspaper for her 90th birthday, Bardot said: “I don’t need anything. I have everything I need for the way I live. I don’t ever want more than what I have.”

As De Beauvoir had hoped, she did not change.

Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting from Paris.

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