Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris (France) on September 28, 1934, into a bourgeois family. Her father was an engineer, but he cultivated poetry, and her mother had studied dance and theater, so they instilled in her daughter her love of the arts. Her extraordinary beauty, which she already highlighted when she was fifteen, also led her to try being a model. And of course, to the movies. In 1952, not yet eighteen years old, she made her screen debut with a small role in Le trou normand . Her screen immediately falls in love with BB, who in her second film, from that same year- Manina, la fille sans voiles-, already has the leading role. It is a mediocre film, but the road is paved to become queen of the screen; even in the United States they pay attention to her, and she works with Kirk Douglas in 1954 in Act of love . René Clair will direct it in The Maneuvers of Love (1955), and was that same year in the Doctor Sparrow saga with Dick Borgarde, in the installment A Doctor in the Navy .

In 1952 she had married filmmaker Roger Vadim , who will direct her in one of her most popular and scandalous films, And God… Created Woman(1956), a title that helped cement her image as a sex symbol. What she did not cement was her marriage, since she separated from Vadim in 1957; which did not prevent them from working together again in The Warrior’s Rest in 1962, in one of the segments of Extraordinary Stories (1968), which adapts stories by Edgar Allan Poe , and in one of his last films , If Don Juan were a woman. (1973), where she embodies the sex change of the famous male seduction paradigm.

He would still go through three other weddings: with the actor Jacques Charrier , who would give him his only son, Nichola, who in turn has given him two granddaughters; with playboy Gunter Sachs; and with the industrialist Bernard d’Ormale, with whom she has been since 1992. In an interview on the occasion of her 50th birthday, she declared: “I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, very flattered, very famous and very unhappy. ”.

BB was immediately seduced by the unique mix of sensuality and naivety that emanated from her, which made the male viewer immediately fall at her feet. This can be seen even in minor titles such as The Son of Nero (Steno, 1956), where she was Poppaea, who aspires to marry the emperor; She had already done another period one before, Helen of Troy , under the orders of Robert Wise . Beyond the screens, BB was also a sociological phenomenon, with her wild hair and feline air, her seductive skills led intellectuals such as Simone de Beauvoir and Marguerite Duras to consider her worthy of attention in her articles. .

Marc Allégret directed her in Futures Vedettes (1954) and Defoliating the Daisy (1956). 1957 saw her collaboration with Charles Boyer on Una Parisienne . For many Babette went to war (1959) was an attempt to soften the provocative image of her; although the truth is that her sensuality was still very present in La femme et le pantin , from that year, directed by Julien Duvivier , where she drove all the members of a family crazy. Another good filmmaker she worked with BB was Henri-Georges Clouzot , although his courtroom thriller The Truth(1960) is not among the best of his filmography. His collaboration with Louis Malle in A Private Life (1962) also stands out, with an actress role cut by his own pattern; with him he repeated in ¡Viva María! (1965), opposite Jeanne Moreau . Although if we are talking about a prestigious director with whom Bardot worked, we must mention Jean-Luc Godard with Contempt (1963), one of her best roles; It is a film show within a cinema, where even the great Fritz Lang was seen .

His forays into Hollywood would occur sporadically. In Dear Brigitte (1965) she coincided with James Stewart , although she was limited to playing herself. Much more important was her work with Sean Connery in the western Shalako ( Edward Dmytryk , 1968), where she was a hunting aristocrat in the Wild West. She would insist on the western together with Claudia Cardinale in a rather mediocre European co-production, Las oileras (1971).

Without having reached the age of 40, Brigitte Bardot made the decision to leave the movie screens. But she would not stop being well present on the public scene. Thus she made an incursion into the world of music recording several albums, an adventure in which she was accompanied by Serge Gainsbourg , who composed “Je t’aime… moi non plus” for her. She, although she, above all, would embark on the environmental cause, and mainly in the defense of animals, through her own foundation. She has been so combative in this field, that she even allowed herself to publicly reproach Sophia Lorenwear a fur coat Being a defender of the animal cause, I think it is interesting to know that she compared herself to a cat, she said of herself that she was a cat turned into a woman: “I meow. scratch. And sometimes I bite.” Precisely in 2003 he wrote a book of memoirs, “Un cri dans le silence”, which was surprising for its sincerity, and in which he insists that beasts deserve more trust than many beings who call themselves humans.