![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Brigitte-Bardot-in-200t6-CREDIT_-Thomas-SAMSON_Gamma-Rapho-via-Getty-Images.jpg\")
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Brigitte Bardot has died aged 91.<\/p>\n
News of the French actor and singer\u2019s death was shared today (December 28) by The Brigitte Bardot Foundation, per French news agency AFP<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0No cause of death has been given.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Brigitte Bardot Foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Madame Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned actress and singer, who chose to abandon her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare and her foundation,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n Bardot shot to fame in 1956 with the film And God Created Women<\/em>, written and directed by her then-husband Roger Radim.<\/p>\n The film, which sees Bardot take on the role of a free-spirited teenage orphan in Saint-Tropez, turned her into an international icon and grossed $4million in the United States \u2013 a record at the time for a foreign film. It was also met with controversy and banned in several states, with a district attorney in Philadelphia declaring it to be of a \u201clascivious, sacrilegious, obscene, indecent, or immoral nature\u201d<\/p>\n She then went on to star in a series of French films in the early \u201960s, including Henri-Georges Clouzot\u2019s Oscar-nominated drama The Truth<\/em>, Louis Malle\u2019s Very Private Affair, <\/em>and Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s Contempt<\/em>. Later, she also starred in various Hollywood productions, including Viva Maria! <\/em>and Shalako<\/em>, a western with Sean Connery.<\/p>\n Bardot\u2019s influence on pop culture has been immense, and she was heavily credited with igniting the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In 1959, philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote an essay about her titled The Lolita Syndrome, where she noted that \u201ca saint would sell his soul to the devil merely to watch her dance.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1963, she released her debut album, \u2018Brigitte Bardot Sings\u2019, which featured covers of songs by French musicians, including Serge Gainsbourg, who she met on the set of her 1959 film Voulez-vous danser avec moi?<\/em><\/p>\n\n Bardot reportedly challenged Gainsbourg to write \u201cthe most beautiful love song he could imagine\u201d for her, which ended up being \u2018Bonnie and Clyde\u2019 and \u2018Je t\u2019aime\u2026 moi non plus\u2019.\u00a0They recorded both songs together, but at the time, Bardot was married to the millionaire Gunter Sachs, who demanded that the song not be released. Gainsbourg then re-recorded it with Jane Birkin, and the original Bardot version was eventually released years later.<\/p>\n Bardot retired from acting in 1973, aged 39, and shifted her career focus to animal protection activism, joining protests against seal hunts in 1977 and establishing the Brigitte Bardot Foundation in 1986. \u201cI gave my youth and beauty to men,\u201d she said at the time. \u201cI am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals.\u201d<\/p>\n In recent years, Bardot was accused of making racist comments several times and has been fined six times by French courts for \u201cinciting racial hatred\u201d with her writing.<\/p>\n In 2018, she was criticised after accusing the female stars who spoke out<\/a>\u00a0as part of the #MeToo movement<\/a> of being \u201chypocritical\u201d.<\/p>\n Bardot is also a close friend of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front party, who was convicted of anti-Semitism, racism, and Holocaust denial in France. His daughter, far-right politician Marine Le Pen, now runs the party.<\/p>\n This is a developing story.<\/em><\/p>\n The post French cinema icon Brigitte Bardot dies aged 91<\/a> appeared first on NME<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brigitte Bardot has died aged 91. News of the French actor and singer\u2019s death was shared today (December 28) by The Brigitte Bardot Foundation, per French news agency AFP.\u00a0No cause of death has been given. \u201cThe Brigitte Bardot Foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Madame Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 12:55:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}