Brigitte Bardot, the French actress and international sex symbol who later renounced movies and embraced animal rights activism and far-right views, has died at 91.
Bardot’s sultry 1956 breakthrough in And God Created Woman made her one of the world’s most desirable women.
Simone de Beauvoir hailed her in 1959 as the face of a changing France. Bardot “personified France in a literal way,” The New York Times wrote: She was the first official face for Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic.
But “France’s love affair with Bardot was to curdle,” The Guardian noted; she was fined for incendiary comments about immigration and Islam.
In a tribute Sunday, far-right leader Marine Le Pen said Bardot “was incredibly French… free, indomitable, whole.”