Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot (famously known as B.B.) was born in Paris in 1934 to a bourgeois French family, her father being a successful industrialist.  At the age of 13 she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet, before deciding to get work as a model. 

In May 1949, Bardot appeared on the cover of Elle magazine, and was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét.  Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress.  (Later, Vadim would become Bardot’s first husband, although the marriage would only last five years.) 

Bardot’s film career began with Jean Boyer’s 1952 film Le Trou normand.  A string of similar small parts followed but it wasn’t until she appeared in Vadim’s 1956 film Et Dieu… créa la femme that she achieved celebrity.  The film was a sensation, on both sides of the Atlantic, and earned Bardot an instant international reputation as a sex goddess. 

Film directors were quick to capitalise on Bardot’s money-spinning potential.  Although she appeared in a few American films, her preference was for French cinema.  The actress starred in a number of high profile films, including Autant-Lara’sEn Cas de malheur, Clouzot’s La Verité and Louis Malle’s Vie privée.  She also starred in Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark 1963 film Le mépris, although this film was far less successful at the box office.  During this period, she began recording songs.

Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  After a series of flops, and tired of the pressures of being an actress (which pushed her to the brink of suicide on a few occasions), she decided to retire from film making.  After her last film in 1975, B.B. announced that she would dedicate the rest of her career to her main passion in life: animal rights. 

In 1976, the former actress set up the Birigitte Bardot Foundation for Distressed Animals, an organisation for which she has worked actively ever since.  For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984.

“I started out as a lousy actress and have remained one.”

“I was just a cheap little starlet hardly acting at all in a very mediocre film.”

“Vadim changed my mind about acting.  Vadim was the only man who was certain I had something special to offer.”

“Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it.”

“What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age?  Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it.”

“I gave my beauty and my youth to men.  I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals.”

“Fame had brought me so much unhappiness.”

“I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, very famous and very unhappy.”

“If this fame, which people call my lucky break, were to stop tomorrow, I shouldn’t care.”

“I never do anything by chance.”

“Only idiots refuse to change their minds.”

“Vadim was both my teacher and my husband.  I placed myself entirely in his hands.”

“I’m a girl from a good family who was very well brought up.  One day I turned my back on it all and became a bohemian.”

“Film-making was not at all what I had expected.”

“Films have never shown the kind of relationship that can exist between two women.”

“If only every man who sees my films did not get the impression he can make love to me, I would be a lot happier.”

“My soul is not my own any more.  I cannot live like I want to.  I am going to give up films.”

“I am not finding pregnancy much of a joy.  I am afraid of childbirth, but I am afraid I can’t find a way of avoiding it.”

“A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you.”

“I have no private life at all.  I am a hunted woman.  I can’t take a step without being questioned and surrounded.”

“Do you have to have a reason for loving?”

“I don’t think when I make love.”

“Have you ever heard of a good marriage growing in front of the cameras?”

“I am against marriage, and I don’t give a fig for society.”

“Men are beasts and even beasts don’t behave as they do.”

“I am no mother, and I won’t be one.”

“They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself.”

“Women get more unhappy the more they try to liberate themselves.”

“I am all right when I work.  I am not superficial and I am not ungrateful.”

“I absolutely loathe luxury.  It is the one thing I cannot stand.”

“I am 30, but there are things about me that are still 15.”

“I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.”

“I am really not interested in the cinema.  I loathed it when I started six years ago, and I don’t enjoy it even now.”

“I can’t do the same thing every night, the same gestures...  it’s like putting on dirty panties every day.”

“I have not always loved wisely, but I was young.”

“I have to live with both my selves as best I may.”

“I know very few Americans, though I like the way they think.  They think big.”

“I know what sin is.”

“I leave before being left.  I decide.”

“If I go to a restaurant, other people stare.  The meal is ruined.”

“It is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful without wanting to be.”

“It is sad to grow old but nice to ripen.”

“It’s better to be unfaithful than faithful without wanting to be.”

“James Stewart was so kind and considerate and had such personal integrity.”

“People are forever finding something wrong with you.”

“Percentages are why I am rich.”

“What does it mean, being a woman?”