French cinema legend Brigitte Bardot dies

According to the Media Life Legend, citing AFP, Brigitte Bardot, a legend of French cinema, has died at the age of 91

Bardot starred in more than 50 films during her career before giving up everything to become an animal rights activist. In the following decades, Bardot turned to the far right, taking a stand against minorities and immigrants, and was accused and convicted several times of incitement to hatred

Known as a sex symbol in her youth in the 1950s, she soon tired of the masculine and instrumental gaze of cinema and gave it all up to care for animals

The actress, known by her initials and as BB and compared to Marilyn Monroe, enjoyed great popular success in her short acting career without attracting critical attention, and most of her films, which numbered 50, were entertaining, with a few exceptions. Among them was her role as the sullen and frustrated wife of a screenwriter in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt, which created scenes that became part o cinematic folklore

French writer Marguerite Duras wrote in 1958: “Queen Bardot stands where morality ends, and Simone de Beauvoir declared a year later: “She does whatever she wants, and that’s what’s worrying

Bardot, who once attempted suicide, explained after leaving the cinema: I knew that my profession was entirely based on my physicality, so I decided to leave the cinema

The actress was married four times and had a child, Nicolas, with her second husband, actor Jacques Charrier

Animal welfare work became a dominant feature of her life after cinema. In a 2011 letter to the conservation group WWF, she recounted her life-changing trip to Canada in the 1980s, where she witnessed the annual slaughter of baby seals, writing: “I will never forget these images, the cries of pain. They still torment me, but they have given me the strength to dedicate my whole life to defending animals.” In 1986, she founded the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, dedicated to animal protection, and campaigned for baby seals and elephants, calling for the abolition of animal sacrifice and the closure of horse slaughterhouses