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Quick Facts
- NAME: Brigitte Bardot
- OCCUPATION: Animal Rights Activist, Film Actress, Pin-up
- BIRTH DATE: September 28, 1934 (Age: 78)
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Paris, France
- Full Name: Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot
- Originally: Camille Javal
- AKA: Brigitte Bardot
- ZODIAC SIGN: Libra
Best Known For
Brigitte Bardot is a French dancer, model and actress who became an international icon in the 1950s and '60s with films like And God Created Women and Contempt.
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Brigitte Bardot - Protecting Animals
French actress Brigitte Bardot turned heads in the films "And God Created Woman" and "Contempt," but has also devoted her life to protecting animals.
Andy Warhol - Mini Bio
Andy Warhol was the superstar of the Pop Art movement. His "Campbell's Soup Cans" and "Gold Marilyn Monroe" made him famous worldwide, and his studio, known as "The Factory," became a magnet for artists of the 60s counterculture.
Kirk Douglas - I Am Spartacus
Actor Kirk Douglas' book "I Am Spartacus!: making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist" explores the triumphs and challenges he endured during filming. Click "buy Now" to learn more about his book. Video courtesy of Open Road Media.
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Play NowBrigitte Bardot. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 10:25, May 25, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/brigitte-bardot-9198860.
Brigitte Bardot. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/brigitte-bardot-9198860 [Accessed 25 May 2013].
"Brigitte Bardot." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 25 2013, 10:25 http://www.biography.com/people/brigitte-bardot-9198860.
"Brigitte Bardot," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/brigitte-bardot-9198860 [accessed May 25, 2013].
"Brigitte Bardot," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/brigitte-bardot-9198860 (accessed May 25, 2013).
Brigitte Bardot [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 25] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/brigitte-bardot-9198860.
Brigitte Bardot, http://www.biography.com/people/brigitte-bardot-9198860 (last visited May 25, 2013).
Brigitte Bardot. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/brigitte-bardot-9198860. Accessed May 25, 2013.
Synopsis
Brigitte Bardot was born on September 28, 1934, in Paris, France. She graced the cover of Elle magazine as a teen and went on to star in several films before being featured in 1956’s And God Created Woman, which launched her to international fame. She appeared in dozens of films over her career, including Contempt and Viva Maria!, and retired from acting in the 1970s. She has subsequently devoted her life to animal activism.
Contents
Quotes
"My parents gave me a strict upbringing, which at times has caused me to suffer distress but today I am grateful to them for it."
"[Roger] Vadim became famous worldwide as a director, and I as an actress, but the other side of the coin was terrible. My life was totally turned upside down. I was followed, spied upon, adored, insulted. My private life became public."
Early Life and Films
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 in Paris, France. She studied ballet as a teenager at the National Superior Conservatory of Paris for Music and Dance and appeared on the cover of France's Elle magazine at the age of 15. She was discovered by screenwriter and future filmmaker Roger Vadim, and the two wed in 1952. Bardot made her big-screen debut that year as well, in Le Trou Normand. Various roles followed, including as a romantic leading lady in La Lumiere d'en Face (1954) and a handmaiden in Helen of Troy (1955).
International Sex Symbol
Bardot would be widely seen in Vadim's directorial debut, And God Created Woman (1956), in which Bardot played a sexually liberated young woman in the southern French town of St. Tropez. The film was noted for its daring nudity and sensual dynamics, proving popular to moviegoers and launching Bardot to international stardom. In her films and off-screen captures by the paparazzi, Bardot became renowned for displaying a naturalistic, free-flowing sensuality that spoke to the concept of joie de vivre, becoming Europe's top actress.
Brigitte Bardot and Vadim divorced in 1957, but maintained a professional relationship, as he directed her 1958 film The Night Heaven Fell. Bardot was featured in other projects as well like The Parisienne (1958), La Femme et le Pantin (1959) and Come Dance With Me (1959). During the making of the 1960 film La Verité, however, Bardot attempted suicide on her 26th birthday. Decades later the actress would talk about how nightmarish the world of celebrity had become and the pressures inherent in constantly aiming to display a certain image.
In the late 1950s, Bardot married actor Jacques Charrier, by whom she had a son, her only child. The couple divorced in 1962. Bardot then married Germany millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs in 1966, divorcing three years later. Years later, in 1992, she wed extreme right-wing political aide Bernard d'Ormale.
Recording Career
During the 1960s, Bardot embarked on a career as a musical artist as well, releasing albums like Brigitte Bardot Sings (1960) and Special Bardot (1968). She also recorded hits with French vocalist/songwriter/lounge-man Serge Gainsbourg.
Her big-screen work continued with the likes of the layered, acclaimed Jean Luc Godard drama Contempt (1963), the humorous, visually arresting Louis Malle film Viva Maria! (1965)—in which she co-starred with fellow French beauty Jeanne Moreau—and the romantic comedy of seduction Les Femmes (1969). She also played herself in the comedy Dear Brigitte (1965), in which the tween son of a professor, played by Jimmy Stewart, gets to meet the cinematic object of his affection.
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