The China Mail - Bardot: the screen goddess who gave it all up

In the early days, when her curves, kohl-rimmed eyes and pout were plastered on French film posters, the actor known widely by her initials BB drew comparisons with Marilyn Monroe.

But from one day to the next in 1973 she turned her back on celebrity to look after abandoned animals, saying she was "sick of being beautiful every day".

- And God Created BB -

In her brief film career, Bardot enjoyed a string of popular successes, without garnering much critical acclaim.

Most of her 50-odd films were fun but forgettable flops -- with a few exceptions.

In 1956 she set the screen alight as an 18-year-old caught up in a love triangle in "And God Created Woman", directed by her then husband Roger Vadim.

Vadim's promise that the young dancer would become "the unattainable fantasy of all married men" proved prescient.

A scene of unbridled sexual energy, in which Bardot dances a mambo in a flowing skirt slit to the waist, sealed her film goddess status, while incurring the wrath of censors.

Seven years later, her role as the sullen, frustrated wife of a screenwriter in Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" also resulted in scenes that became part of cinema folklore.

Playing with the expectations of producers and spectators to have shots of Bardot's naked body in the film, Godard created a montage of her limbs as she lay in bed with her husband, asking him which part of her body he liked best.

- Leaving first -

"Queen Bardot stands there where morality ends," French author Marguerite Duras wrote in 1958.

"She does as she pleases, and that is what is disturbing," philosopher Simone de Beauvoir declared a year later.

But far from revelling in her role as libertine, Bardot struggled with objectification.

On her 26th birthday in 1960 she attempted suicide, and then in 1973, just short of her 40th birthday, she turned her back on it all.

"I knew my career was based entirely on my physique," she explained in 1978, "so I decided to leave cinema just as I have always left men: first."

- Animal love -

Born on September 28, 1934 in Paris, Bardot was raised in a well-off traditional Catholic household.

Married four times, she had one child, Nicolas-Jacques with her second husband, actor Jacques Charrier.

Animal activism became the dominant feature of her life after film, as she retreated to the French Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez at the age of just 39.

In a 2011 letter to conservation group WWF, Bardot recounted her life-changing visit to Canada in the 1980s when she witnessed its annual seal cub culls.

"I will never forget these pictures, the screams of pain, they still torture me but they have given me the strength to sacrifice my whole life to defend the animal’s one,” she said.

In 1986 she set up the Brigitte Bardot Foundation dedicated to animal protection. She has crusaded for baby seals and elephants, called for the abolition of ritual animal sacrifice and the closure of horse abattoirs.

- Far-right 'Joan of Arc' -

In later decades Bardot veered to the far-right, increasingly prone to disparaging remarks about gays, Muslims and immigrants that led to five convictions for inciting racial hatred.

In her 2003 book "A Cry in the Silence", she warned against the "Islamisation of France" and a "subterranean, dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration".

In the 2012 and 2017 presidential elections she publicly supported far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who called her the "Joan of Arc of the 21st century."

- Not #MeToo -

Bardot continued to shun the fashion and film worlds long after her retreat from both, frequently outspoken against the wearing of fur and proudly refusing to resort to plastic surgery.

In the whirlwind of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that unravelled in 2017, she again swam against the tide, hitting back at the #MeToo campaign which denounced the abuse of women.

"The vast majority are being hypocritical and ridiculous," she told Paris Match in 2018, referring to the actresses who had come forward with stories of abuse.

"Lots of actresses try to play the tease with producers to get a role. And then, so we will talk about them, they say they were harassed. I found it charming when men told me I was beautiful or I had a nice little backside."

E.Lau--ThChM