1934
Brigitte Bardot is born
The Paris-born actress became France's most famous film star of the 1950s and 1960s, then gave up cinema for a long, outspoken fight for animals.
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born in Paris on September 28, 1934, in the 15th arrondissement. Her father, Louis Bardot, was an engineer who owned several factories, and the family lived in a large apartment in the wealthy 16th arrondissement. She grew up in a strict Catholic household with her younger sister, Mijanou. Her parents imposed rigid rules, and she later described feeling resentful of them from an early age.
As a girl she trained in ballet, and in 1949 she was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris. That same year Hélène Gordon-Lazareff, who ran Elle magazine, hired her as a junior model. A 1950 cover of Elle, published when Bardot was 15, led to an audition where she met the director Roger Vadim, whom she later married. Her first film role came in 1952, and she spent the next few years in small parts in French, Italian, British, and American productions.
Stardom arrived with And God Created Woman (1956), Vadim’s debut as a director. The film was a hit in France and abroad, and in the United States it became the highest-grossing foreign film released up to that time. By 1958 she was the best-paid actress in France. She went on to work with directors such as Henri-Georges Clouzot, Louis Malle, and Jean-Luc Godard, whose Le Mépris (1963) is among her best-known films, and she recorded popular songs, many with Serge Gainsbourg.
Why it matters
Bardot became one of the best-known symbols of the sexual revolution. Simone de Beauvoir wrote about her in a 1959 essay, and Charles de Gaulle reportedly called her a French export as important as Renault cars. From 1969 to 1972 she was the official face of Marianne, the national symbol of France.
In 1973 she retired from acting, and in 1986 she founded the Brigitte Bardot Foundation to protect animals, auctioning jewelry and personal belongings to fund it. Her activism made her a lasting voice on animal welfare, while her repeated public statements about Muslims and immigrants led to several convictions for inciting racial hatred. She died at her home, La Madrague, in Saint-Tropez on December 28, 2025, at the age of 91.
Did you know?
Bardot was naturally brunette. She first dyed her hair blond for the Italian film Nero’s Weekend (1956) and liked the result so much that she kept it.
