BRIGITTE BARDOT ENGLISH

ENGLISH

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot (French pronunciation: [bʁiʒit baʁdo], English: /ˈbrɪdʒɨt bɑrˈdoʊ/; born 28 September 1934) is a French former fashion model, actress and singer, and animal rights activist.

In her early life, Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer. 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 starred in Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 cult film, Contempt. She 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 Légion d'honneur in 1985 but refused to receive it.

After her retirement, Bardot established herself as an animal rights activist. During the 1990s she became controversial by criticising immigration, Islamization 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. She grew up in a middle-class observant Roman Catholic family. Brigitte's mother enrolled Brigitte and her sister Marie-Jean (born 5 May 1938) in dance. Marie-Jean 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 modeled in a fashion show in 1949. In the same year, she modeled 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.

Although the European film industry was then in its ascendancy, Bardot was one of the few European actresses to have the mass media's attention in the United States, an interest which she did not reciprocate, rarely if ever going to Hollywood. She debuted in a 1952 comedy film Le Trou Normand (English title: Crazy for Love). From 1952-56 she appeared in seventeen films; in 1953 she played a role in Jean Anouilh's stageplay L'Invitation au château (Invitation to the Castle). She received media attention when she attended the Cannes Film Festival in April 1953.

Her films of the early and mid 1950s were generally lightweight romantic dramas, some historical, in which she was cast as ingénue or siren, often in varying states of undress. She played bit parts in three English-language films, the British comedy Doctor at Sea (1955) with Dirk Bogarde, Helen of Troy (1954), in which she was understudy for the title role but only appears as Helen's handmaid, and Act of Love (1954) with Kirk Douglas. Her French-language films were dubbed for international release.

Roger Vadim was not content with this light fare. The New Wave of French and Italian art directors and their stars were riding high internationally, and he felt Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in And God Created Woman (1956) with Jean-Louis Trintignant. The film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was an international success.

In Bardot's early career, professional photographer Sam Levin's photos contributed to her image of sensuality. Onephoto shows Brigitte from behind, dressed in a white corset. British photographer Cornel Lucas made iconic images of Bardot in the 1950s and 1960s that have become representative of her public persona. She divorced Vadim in 1957 and in 1959 married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette Goes to War. The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career.

Vie privée (1960), directed by Louis Malle has more than an element of her life story in it.^{[citation needed]} The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names, was based on an actual incident, and is a resonant image of celebrity in the mid-20th century.^{[citation needed]}Bardot was awarded a David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign actress for the role.

Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France where she had bought the house La Madrague in Saint-Tropez in May 1958. In 1963 she starred in Jean-Luc Godard's critically acclaimed film Contempt. Bardot was featured in many other films along with notable actors such as Alain Delon (Famous Love Affairs, Spirits of the Dead), Jean Gabin (In Case of Adversity), Sean Connery (Shalako), Jean Marais (Royal Affairs in Versailles, School for Love), Lino Ventura (Rum Runners), Annie Girardot (The Novices), Claudia Cardinale (The Legend of Frenchie King), Jeanne Moreau (Viva Maria!), Jane Birkin (Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman).

In 1973 Bardot announced that she was retiring from acting as "a way to get out elegantly".

She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including "Harley Davidson", "Je Me Donne A Qui Me Plait", "Bubble gum", "Contact", "Je Reviendrais Toujours Vers Toi", "L'Appareil A Sous", "La Madrague", "On Demenage", "Sidonie", "Tu Veux, Ou Tu Veux Pas?", "Le Soleil De Ma Vie" (the cover of Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life") and the notorious "Je t'aime... moi non plus".

Bardot pleaded with Gainsbourg not to release this duet and he complied with her wishes; the following year he re-recorded a version with British-born model and actress Jane Birkin, which became a massive hit all over Europe. The version with Bardot was issued in 1986 and became a popular download hit in 2006 when Universal Records made their back catalogue available to purchase online, with this version of the song ranking as the third most popular download.

On 21 December 1952, aged 18, Bardot was married to director Roger Vadim. In order to receive permission from Bardot's parents to marry her, Vadim, originally a Russian OrthodoxChristian, was urged to convert to Catholicism, although it is not clear if he ever did so. They divorced five years later, but remained friends and collaborated in later work. Bardot had an affair with her And God Created Woman co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant (married at the time to actress Stephane Audran) before her divorce from Vadim. The two lived together for about two years. Their relationship was complicated by Trintignant's frequent absence due to military service and Bardot's affair with musician Gilbert Bécaud, and they eventually separated.^[

The 9 February 1958 edition of the Los Angeles Times reported on the front page that Bardot was recovering in Italy from a reported nervous breakdown. A suicide attempt with sleeping pills two days earlier was denied by her public relations manager.

On 18 June 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, by whom she had her only child, a son, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier (born 11 January 1960). After she and Charrier divorced in 1962, Nicolas was raised in the Charrier family and did not maintain close contact with Bardot until his adulthood.

Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs (14 July 1966  – 1 October 1969) and Bernard d'Ormale (16 August 1992 – present). In the late 1950s she shared an exchange which called "la croisée de deux sillages" ("the crossing of two wakes") with actor and true-crime author John Gilmore, then an actor in France who was working on a New Wave film with Jean Seberg. Gilmore told Paris Match: "I felt a beautiful warmth with Bardot but found it difficult to discuss things in any depth whatsoever."

In the 1970s Bardot she lived with sculptor Miroslav Brozek and posed for some of his sculptures. In 1974 she Bardot appeared in a nude photo shoot in Playboy magazine, which celebrated her 40th birthday.

In 1973, before her 39th birthday, Bardot announced her retirement. After appearing in more than forty motion pictures and recording several music albums, most notably with Serge Gainsbourg, she chose to use her fame to promote animal rights.

In 1986 she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian  and raised three million francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewelry and many personal belongings. Today she is a strong animal rights activist and a major opponent of the consumption of horse meat. In support of animal protection, she condemned seal hunting in Canada during a visit to that country with Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. She sought to discuss the issue withStephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, but her request for a meeting was reportedly denied.On 25 May 2011 the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society renamed its fast interceptor vessel, formerly known as MV Gojira, as MV Brigitte Bardot in appreciation of her support.

She once had a neighbor's donkey castrated while looking after it, on the grounds of its "sexual harassment" of her own donkey and mare, for which she was taken to court by the donkey's owner in 1989.^] Bardot wrote a 1999 letter to Chinese President Jiang Zemin, published in French magazine VSD, in which she accused the Chinese of "torturing bears and killing the world's last tigers and rhinos to make aphrodisiacs".

She has donated more than $140,000 over two years for a mass sterilization and adoption program for Bucharest's stray dogs, estimated to number 300,000. She is planning to house many of these stray animals in a new animal rescue facility that she is having built on her property.

In August 2010 Bardot addressed a letter to the Danish Queen, Margrethe II of Denmark appealing for the sovereign to halt the killing of dolphins in the Faroe Islands. In the letter, Bardot describes the activity as a "macabre spectacle" that "is a shame for Denmark and the Faroe Islands . . . This is not a hunt but a mass slaughter . . . . an outmoded tradition that has no acceptable justification in today's world".

On 22 April 2011 French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand officially inscribed bullfighting on a list enumerating the country's cultural heritage, a decision which Bardot is currently publicly contesting. "French culture is a culture of enlightenment and has nothing to do with bloody things like bullfighting," she wrote.

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. Bardot never joined the party and is not a known sympathiser.

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: "...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 “Islamicization 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.^{[citation needed]} 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, saying, "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 "the mixing of genes"; 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".^[33]

On 10 June 2004 Bardot was again convicted by a French court for "inciting racial hatred" and fined €5,000, the fourth such conviction/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."^[35]

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 expressed that she was "fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its habits" in reference to Muslims. The trial concluded on 3 June 2008, with a conviction and fine of 15,000 euros, 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".

In fashion the Bardot neckline (a wide open neck that exposes both shoulders) is named after her. Bardot popularized this style which is especially used for knitted sweaters or jumpers although it is also used for other tops and dresses.

Bardot is recognized for popularizing bikini swimwear in early films such as Manina (Woman without a Veil, 1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photo shoots.

Bardot also brought into fashion the choucroute ("Sauerkraut") hairstyle (a sort of beehive hair style) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. She was the subject for an Andy Warhol painting.

In addition to popularizing the bikini swimming suit, Bardot has also been credited with popularizing the city of St. Tropez and the town of Armação dos Búzios in Brazil, which she visited in 1964 with her boyfriend at the time, Brazilian musician Bob Zagury. A statue by Christina Motta honours Brigitte Bardot in Armação dos Búzios.

Bardot was idolized by young John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They made plans to shoot a film featuring The Beatles and Bardot, similar toA Hard Day's Night, but the plans were never fulfilled. Lennon's first wife Cynthia Powell lightened her hair color to more closely resemble Bardot, while George Harrison made comparisons between Bardot and his first wife Pattie Boyd, as Cynthia wrote later in A Twist of Lennon. Lennon and Bardot met in person once, in 1968 at the Mayfair Hotel, introduced by Beatles press agent Derek Taylor; a nervous Lennon took LSD before arriving, and neither star impressed the other. (Lennon recalled in a memoir, "I was on acid, and she was on her way out.") According to the liner notes of his first (self-titled) album, musician Bob Dylan dedicated the first song he ever wrote to Bardot. He also mentioned her by name in "I Shall Be Free", which appeared on his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

She dabbled in pop music and played the role of a glamour model. In 1965, she appeared as herself in the Hollywood production Dear Brigitte (1965) starring James Stewart, one of the few American films in which she appeared. She refused to travel to Hollywood to film her scene, requiring the needed cast and crew members to travel to film in Paris.

In 1970 sculptor Alain Gourdon used Bardot as the model for a bust of Marianne, the French national emblem.

In 2007 she was named among Empire magazine's 100 Sexiest Film Stars.

The first-ever official exhibition looking at Bardot's influence and legacy opened in Paris on 29 September 2009 – a day after her 75th birthday.