Brigitte Bardot obituary

"Brigitte Bardot was a very carnal incarnation of the new, sexually liberated woman, wrote film critics in the 1950s and 60s. (I understand your main interest is animals, said a flustered BBC interviewer. No, replied Bardot, my main interest is sex.) That was how Bardot, who has died aged 91, was sold as a film star but, in truth, she could have been a character from a novel by Colette, whose subject was always l'amour love as a transaction, or a madness, seldom a liberation."

"All Bardot's incarnations might have been invented by Colette: Bardot the nubile teen so flattered by the attentions of the film-maker Roger Vadim that at 16 she attempted suicide to blackmail her parents into sanctioning their marriage; the adult Bardot who wept if she slept alone, and found that the sacks of letters from fans could not soothe her woes; Bardot the spirit of Saint-Tropez, who drugged herself with sun (You can be barefoot and have worries, she said later)."

"Bardot had been talent-spotted in her teens dancing in a show for the millinery shop run by her mother, Anne-Marie (nee Mucel), and she featured on the March 1950 cover of Elle magazine. By then, she had had 10 years of ballet training, some at the Paris Conservatoire, as the proper accomplishment for the daughter of the prosperous Parisian manufacturer Louis Bardot, and also attended the private Cours Hattemer school. Vadim, then a director's assistant, saw the Elle picture, and told Bardot's mother: It would be fascinating to take your daughter and make it seem as if she has gone completely off the rails. Bardot and Vadim married when she was 18, and she became a willing accomplice in his plans to invent a directorial career"

Brigitte Bardot emerged as a defining carnal figure linked to sexual liberation in the 1950s and 60s while also reflecting Colette-like themes of love as transaction or madness. She experienced intense personal turmoil, including a suicide attempt at 16 to force parental agreement for marriage to Roger Vadim, whom she married at 18. Bardot trained in ballet for a decade, appeared on Elle in 1950, and became synonymous with Saint-Tropez glamour. She faced loneliness despite fan adoration and later retired to a reclusive life devoted to championing animals.

Read at www.theguardian.com