| Brigitte Bardot  Born: 28-Sep-1934
Birthplace: Paris, France
Gender: Female
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor, Activist Nationality: France
Executive summary: Voulez-vous danser avec moi? Arguably film's first sex kitten, Brigitte Bardot grew up in a wealthy, conservative French Catholic family. She was named for her mother's favorite doll, and as a child wore braces on her teeth and glasses to correct astigmatism. Bardot began studying ballet at the age of five, and at 13 she danced alongside Leslie Caron at the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse. At 14, she blossomed and was photographed for the cover of Elle magazine. At 15, Bardot met her future first ex-husband Roger Vadim, and attempted suicide when her parents refused permission for her to marry until she was 18. They married when she turned 18, and divorced five years later.
She moved from modeling to acting, and played a 17-year-old nymphet (at 22) in Vadim's And God Created Woman, a role that made Bardot known internationally. She embodied a natural yet innocent sexuality that was a precursor to the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s. The actress eschewed the Catholic principles of her childhood, saying "It is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful without wanting to be." Brigitte Bardot was one of the first women to wear a bikini, and later she and her friends would be the first to sunbathe topless at St. Tropez in the late 1960s. She was the first international star to be as popular as any homegrown pinup in the US.
Long prone to depression, Bardot has attempted suicide multiple times. "I really wanted to die at certain periods in my life. Death was like love, a romantic escape. I took pills because I didn't want to throw myself off my balcony and know people would photograph me lying dead below." On her 26th birthday she attempted her most publicly known suicide attempt, swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills and slitting her wrists.
Bardot retired from films at 39, to focus on her love of animals and her increasingly odd political activism. She sold her home, her jewels, and other personal effects in 1986 to start the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, which works for animal rights across the world. She has been outspoken to the point of causing international offense on the behalf of animals, and once stole a mynah bird on a French street because its owner, whom she beat with an umbrella, was "abusing" it by giving it a hamburger and fries.
Political incorrectness has dogged Bardot in recent years, being fined by the French government no fewer than four times in recent years for "inciting hatred" with her books. Her views that gays are "fairground freaks", that racially mixed marriages are an abomination, and that France is being "Islamized" have been problematic, as has her denunciation of the ritual slaughter of sheep during the Muslim feast of Eid. Bardot was an outspoken supporter of France's failed fascist presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Father: Charles Bardot ("Pilou", engineer)
Mother: Anne-Marie Mucel Bardot (homemaker)
Sister: Marie-Jean Bardot ("Mijarout")
Husband: Roger Vadim (film director, m. 1952, div. 1957)
Husband: Jacques Charrier (French actor, b. 1936, m. 1959, div. 1962))
Son: Nicholas Charrier
Husband: Gunter Sachs (millionaire, heir to Fichtel & Sachs)
Husband: Bernard d'Ormale (right wing, allegedly racist politician)
Boyfriend: Serge Gainsbourg (singer)
Boyfriend: Sacha Distel
Boyfriend: Jean-Louis Trintignant (actor)
Boyfriend: Luis Miguel Gonzalez Lucas (matador)
Boyfriend: Marlon Brando
Boyfriend: Warren Beatty
Boyfriend: Mick Jagger
Boyfriend: Sean Connery
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Media and Arts Advisory Board
Inciting Racial Hatred for her book A Cry in the Silence, 2003
Inciting Racial Hatred for her book Pluto's Square, convicted 2000
Inciting Racial Hatred convicted 1998
Inciting Racial Hatred convicted 1997
Suicide Attempt 28-Sep-1960
Suicide Attempt 1949
Risk Factors: Breast Cancer, Vegetarian, Smoking, Homophobia, Depression, Nudism
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Rum Runners (31-Oct-1971)
Shalako (26-Sep-1968)
Spirits of the Dead (17-May-1968)
Viva Marķa! (22-Nov-1965)
Contempt (29-Oct-1963)
A Very Private Affair (31-Jan-1962)
The Truth (2-Nov-1960)
Love Is My Profession (17-Sep-1958)
...And God Created Woman (28-Nov-1956)
Helen of Troy (25-Jan-1956)
Les grandes manoeuvres (25-Oct-1955)
Doctor at Sea (26-Sep-1955)
Act of Love (17-Dec-1953)
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