Brigitte Bardot, icon of French cinema turned animal rights activist, dead at 91

Brigitte Bardot, the 1960s French actress who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later an animal rights activist and far-right supporter, has died. She was 91.

Bardot died on Sunday at her home in southern France, according to Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals.

Speaking to The Associated Press, he gave no cause of death and said no arrangements have yet been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month.

Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teen bride in the 1956 movie And God Created Woman. Directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim, it triggered a scandal with scenes of the long-legged beauty dancing on tables naked.

At the height of a cinema career that spanned some 28 films and three marriages, Bardot came to symbolize a nation bursting out of bourgeois respectability. Her tousled, blond hair, voluptuous figure and pouty irreverence made her one of France’s best-known stars.

Such was her widespread appeal that in 1969, her features were chosen to be the model for Marianne, the national emblem of France and the official Gallic seal. Bardot’s face appeared on statues, postage stamps and even coins.

‘’We are mourning a legend,’' French President Emmanuel Macron wrote Sunday on social media platform X.

Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She travelled to Newfoundland to blow the whistle on the slaughter of baby seals; she condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments; and she opposed Muslim slaughter rituals.

“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told The Associated Press on her 73rd birthday, in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of an animal that suffers, since it has no power, no words to defend itself."

Her activism earned her compatriots’ respect, and in 1985, she was awarded the Legion of Honour, the nation’s highest recognition.

Later, however, Bardot fell from public grace as her animal protection diatribes took on a decidedly extremist tone. She frequently decried the influx of immigrants into France, especially Muslims.

She was convicted and fined five times in French courts of inciting racial hatred, in incidents inspired by her opposition to the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep during annual religious holidays.

Bardot’s 1992 marriage to fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale, a onetime adviser to National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, contributed to her political shift. She described Le Pen, an outspoken nationalist with multiple racism convictions of his own, as a “lovely, intelligent man."

In 2012, she wrote a letter in support of the presidential bid of Marine Le Pen, who now leads her father’s renamed National Rally party. Le Pen paid homage on Sunday to an “exceptional woman” who was “incredibly French.”