Brigitte Bardot: film star, animal advocate and convicted for racial hatred

Brigitte Bardot, the French actor who became an international sex symbol and later an animal rights campaigner, died on 28 December at the age of 91. Bardot rose to prominence in the 1950s and 60s — notably in the 1956 film And God Created Woman — and became an enduring cultural image, even serving as the model for a 1969 bust of Marianne.

After her death, the singer Chappell Roan posted and then deleted a tribute on Instagram, saying she had been unaware of Bardot’s later views. In later life Bardot combined animal-rights activism with outspoken, racist public statements. The source quotes her writing that Muslims “They slaughter women and children, our monks, our civil servants, our tourists and our sheep, one day they’ll slaughter us, and we’ll have deserved it,” and that “Illegal immigrants … desecrate and storm our churches, transforming them into human pigsties, defecating behind the altar.” She was convicted five times of incitement to racial hatred and also used derogatory language about gay people and #MeToo victims, the material says.

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, called her a “legend of the century”, an assessment the article notes as one perspective among many.

Key Topics

Culture, Brigitte Bardot, France, Animal Rights, Racial Hatred, Emmanuel Macron