Bardot, Brigitte

(1934- )

   Actress. Probably the most famous starlet French cinema or world cinema has ever produced, Brigitte Bardot came to the screen at the age of sixteen, after having modeled for several French women's magazines, most notably Elle. Bardot's first film role was in Jean Boyer's Le Trou normand(1952). While it did not make her a star, it was a successful enough performance to start her career. Bardot attracted the attention of Marc Allégret, who cast her in his 1955 film Futures vedettes and in his 1956 film En effeuillant la marguerite. Her roles in both films gave Bardot considerable visibility and launched her on the road to stardom. The film, of course, that made Bardot a household name, was husband Roger Vadim's (the two had married in 1952) Et Dieu créa la femme (1956). In it, Bardot played the voluptuous, yet naïve Juliette, the woman who unwittingly comes between two brothers. The film made Bardot an international sex symbol and French cinema icon. It did not, however, do much for her marriage to Vadim, and the two divorced in 1957.

   Following Et Dieu créa la femme, Bardot would go on to work with many of France's leading directors. In 1958, Julien Duvivier cast her in La Femme et le pantin, Claude-Autant Lara directed her in En cas de malheur (1958), Jean-Luc Godard directed her in Le Mépris (1963) and Masculin, feminine (1966), Louis Malle directed her in Vie privée (1962) and Viva Maria! (1965), and Michel Deville directed her in L'Ours et la poupée (1969). She made two other films with Vadim, Les Bijoutiers du clair de lune (1958) and Don Juan (1973).

   Bardot's films tend to reflect the role she came to play in the public eye at the height of her career. As her untamed, wild blond hair always suggested, Bardot the icon came to stand for the ability of women to refuse to conform to those roles thrust upon them, be they by society or by men. Bardot also represented an overt, if not fully conscious sexuality. She stood for an uninhibited demand for women to be who they were and to go where they wanted. It is small wonder her popularity coincided with an era that saw the rise of the women's movement and the general throwing over of traditional values. It is also no surprise that she was as popular in the United States as she was in France.

   Bardot gave up her film career in 1974, in part because she really did not like fame and in part because she no doubt realized that her physical appearance was a great deal of her appeal, and that as she aged and her appearance changed audience interest in her would likely diminish. Since that time, she devoted her life to the cause of animal rights, and, for the most part, stayed out of the public eye. However, Bardot, who is married to a senior member of France's extreme right-wing party, the Front National, has attracted a fair degree of controversy since 1997. She has made numerous racist and anti-homosexual remarks and has been fined several times, since such remarks are illegal under France's hate crimes laws. In 2003, she published a book, A Cry in the Silence, which was filled with many of the same kinds of racist and extremist rhetoric, and for which she was also fined.

   Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins