Au Revoir Brigitte Bardot
Update: Brigitte Bardot died December 28, 2025, age 91. She is survived by her fourth husband, Bernard D’Ormale, and her son Nicolas (from her second husband, Jacques Charrier, who pre-deceased her in September 2025).
Parisian Ballerina, Actress, Singer
(Brigitte Bardot 1956 …And God Created Woman Movie Trailer)
French actress, ballet dancer, singer, model and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 in Paris, France. The Bardot family lived in an apartment on the Rue de la Pompe in Paris, and had a cottage in Louveciennes outside of Paris. They holidayed in The Alps in the winter and Saint-Tropez in the summer, where Brigitte’s mother Anne-Marie Bardot had a house.
Bardot began taking dance lessons as a child; as a new teenager in 1947, she began to study ballet at the Conservatoire de Paris for 3 years. In her ballet classes was another aspiring young Parisian dancer and future actress, Leslie Caron.
(Brigitte Bardot 1952 Photo: Michael Donovan)
Brigitte Bardot began modelling at age 15 and first appeared on the May 2, 1949 cover of Elle magazine. Her appearance on the March 1950 cover of Elle ended up catching the eye of fledgling French movie director Roger Vadim, age 22.
Vadim arranged a movie audition for 16-year-old Bardot and met her and her mother at the audition.
According to France Today, both Roger Vadim and Brigitte Bardot were instantly smitten with each other. Although the movie she auditioned for was never made, they began to meet secretly.
Brigitte Bardot’s family disapproved of her relationship with Roger Vadim. They were going to send her away to England, when she attempted suicide by turning on an oven and putting her head inside. Her parents caved and agreed that they could be married when Brigitte turned 18.
17-year-old Brigitte Bardot made her film debut in the French comedy Le Trou Normand/Crazy for Love (1952).
Brigitte Bardot posing in front of her 1954 Simca Weekend car, a prototype. (Photo: German Medeot)
In another first, she wore a bikini on screen in Manina, la fille sans voiles/The Girl in the Bikini (1952). In December of 1952, 18-year-old Brigitte Bardot finally married 24-year old director Roger Vadim.
Roger Vadim took Brigitte to the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, and she was frequently photographed wearing a bikini on the beaches.
Bardot would wear bikinis again in the movies and has been credited with popularizing the tiny swimsuit with young baby boomers.
Brigitte Bardot continued to appear in small or uncredited roles in mostly French and Italian light comedies and romances in the early 1950’s. She appeared in the World War II romance Act of Love (1953) starring Kirk Douglas and Dany Robin. The following year she starred in the drama Concert of Intrigue (1954) in Roverto and Trento, in Northern Italy.
Brigitte Bardot’s first starring role was in the Italian drama Tradita/Concert of Intrigue (1954), and this was soon followed by more roles in bigger movies. In the English comedy Doctor at Sea (1955), Brigitte Bardot co-starred with Dirk Bogarde and Michael Medwin.
(Brigitte Bardot 1955 Photo: Smabs Sputzer)
The Italian historical comedy Mio figlio Nerone/Nero’s Mistress (1956), Brigitte Bardot’s co-stars included Gloria Swanson; and in La mariée est trop belle /Her Bridal Night (1956), Bardot is model Chouchou, opposite Louis Jourdan as Michel.
That same year, Bardot’s husband Roger Vadim cast Brigitte in his movie Et Dieu… créa la femme/…And God Created Woman (1956) co-starring Curt Jurgens (Curd Jürgens) and Jean-Louis Trintignant, another Roger Vadim discovery.
In the movie, Brigitte Bardot is a free-loving, bikini-clad teenager seducing men. …And God Created Woman made Brigitte Bardot an international star and brought her to the attention of North Americans, and the phrase “sex kitten” was coined.
Brigitte Bardot and Jean-Louis Trintignant (also married, to Stéphane Audran), began an affair during the filming of …And God Created Woman.
As rumours of the affair between Trintignant and Bardot hit the press, Bardot left Vadim and Jean-Louis Trintignant joined the French army; he was frequently away for army duties during the almost 2 years they lived together.
Despite the chaos in her private life, Brigitte Bardot continued appearing in movies such as Une parisienne/La Parisienne (1957), a comedy co-starring Charles Boyer.
In late 1957, Brigitte Bardot divorced Roger Vadim (1957) and met Gilbert Becaud (a married French singer and musician); she began an affair with Becaud, which eventually Jean-Louis Trintignant discovered. Trintignant left her and the press got wind of Bardot’s affair with Gilbert Becaud, who was also frequently away performing, leaving Bardot alone. In early 1958, Brigitte Bardot had a nervous breakdown and another suicide attempt was reported.
(Brigitte Bardot 1958 Silver Screen Magazine Photo: Jussi)
By the end of May 1958, a recovering Brigitte Bardot had dumped Gilbert Becaud and moved into a house she’d bought in Saint-Tropez called La Madrague, where she has lived ever since.
She met French singer and guitarist Sacha Distel, and another romance began. Although it was reported in the press in 1959 that Bardot proposed to him and their relationship ended when he refused, Sacha Distel issued a press release saying Brigitte Bardot had ended things between them.
In June 1959, Brigitte Bardot married French actor Jacques Charrier, who was her co-star in the WWII war comedy Babette s’en va-t-en guerre/ Babette Goes to War (1959).
Bardot said in her autobiography Initiales BB (1996) that when she found herself pregnant at age 25 in 1959, she punched her stomach in attempt to lose the baby.
Jacques Charrier and Brigitte Bardot’s son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier (Nicolas Charrier) was born in January 1960, and her husband Jacques took care of baby Nicolas. Bardot has acknowledged that Jacques Charrier had the maternal instinct she lacked, and said that she was too much of a child herself to take care of someone else.
(Brigitte Bardot 1959 Photo: Michael Donovan)
Later that year, Bardot once again tried to commit suicide, this time taking sleeping pills and cutting her wrists. By the time Brigitte Bardot and Jacques Charrier divorced in January, 1963 and Charrier was granted custody of Nicolas, the couple had been separated for a couple of years. Bardot rarely saw her son after that.
Beginning in 1961, Brigitte began recording albums and singles, most of them in collaboration with current or future lovers Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury, and Sacha Distel. Although Brigitte Bardot Sings (1963) was an early collaboration with singer Serge Gainsbourg, they were not lovers until 1967.
She was still on good terms with ex-husband Roger Vadim at that time, who is quoted by Ginette Vincendeau, the author of the book, Brigitte Bardot: The Life, The Legend, The Movies (1995), as saying of Bardot’s affair with Jean-Louis Trintignant while filming …And God Created Woman:
“I knew what was happening and rather expected it…I would always prefer to have that kind of wife, knowing she is unfaithful to me rather than possess a woman who just loved me and no one else…I wanted a woman with spirit, with joie de vivre … a woman with a sense of adventure and sexual curiosity.”
Vadim was also unfaithful during their marriage, so he couldn’t complain. They continued to work together on movies in the 1960’s, with Roger Vadim directing Brigitte Bardot in the comedy La bride sur le cou /Please, Now Now! (1961), and the romantic drama Le repos du guerrier /Love on a Pillow (1962), which co-starred actor Robert Hossein.
In Amours célèbres/Famous Love Affairs (1961), Brigitte Bardot co-starred with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Philippe Noiret, and Dany Robin, who had been a co-star in 1953’s Act of Love, one of Bardot’s first movies.
Retired Actress and Animal Rights Activist
Famed director Louis Malle directed baby boomer favorite actress Brigitte Bardot in 3 movies:
(Brigitte Bardot 1962 A Very Private Affair Photo: MGM)
Vie privée/A Very Private Affair (1962), a drama co-starring with Marcello Mastroianni. - Histoires extraordinaires /Spirits of the Dead (1968), a segmented movie in which 3 directors (Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim) each adapted an Edgar Allan Poe short story. Appearing in the Louis Malle Spirits of the Dead segment with Brigitte Bardot was Alain Delon; in another segment directed by Roger Vadim, Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda; and in Federico Fellini’s segment, actor Terence Stamp appeared.
- Viva Maria! (1965), a romantic adventure with George Hamilton and Jeanne Moreau. Moreau and Bardot sing the duet Ah ! Les p’tites femmes de Paris in Viva Maria!
Brigitte Bardot was an uncredited co-producer and the star of Une ravissante idiote/Agent 38-24-36 (1964), a comedy co-starring Anthony Perkins.
Among the over 100 lovers (mostly men but some women as well) that Brigitte Bardot has admitted to, is Brazilian musician Bob Zagury. Bob Zagury and Bardot vacationed in the town of Armação dos Búzios in Brazil in 1964, and there is a statue in Bardot’s likeness there.
(Brigitte Bardot 1965 Photo)
Brigitte Bardot married widowed German millionaire, documentary maker, former Nazi party member and honorary SS officer Gunter Sachs in Las Vegas, Nevada in July 1966; it was her third marriage, his second. Sachs is reported to have romanced Bardot by dropping hundreds of roses from a helicopter as it flew over her Saint Tropez home.
They divorced on friendly terms in October 1969 and remained friends after the marriage ended. Gunter Sachs remarried; he later shot and killed himself in 2011 at the age of 78 at his home in Switzerland, reportedly because of Alzheimer’s Disease or a similar condition.
The movie Two Weeks in September (1967) starred Brigitte Bardot and Laurent Laurent Terzieff; for the first time, her voice was not dubbed in English.
(Brigitte Bardot c. 1960s Photo: German Medot)
In the Brigitte Bardot Show 67 (1967), Bardot collaborated with former lover Sacha Distel and new lover Serge Gainsbourg to write and sing songs. She sang the duet Bonnie and Clyde with Serge Gainsbourg, and it was included on her 1968 album with Gainsbourg of the same name, Bonnie and Clyde. The single Je t’aime… moi non plus (1967) was another duet with Serge Gainsbourg. Gainsbourg dedicated his 1968 song and album Initials BB to Brigitte Bardot.
Bardot was nearing the end of her film career when she appeared in the western Shalako (1968) co-starring former James Bond film star Sean Connery, Stephen Boyd, and Honor Blackman.
In 1968 Brigitte Bardot began a new relationship with student/actor Patrick Gilles, who had a small role in her 1970 movie The Bear and the Doll; by mid-1971 she had broken off with Gilles.
Actor Warren Beatty, who had co-starred with Faye Dunaway in the movie Bonnie and Clyde (1967), also had a very short-lived romance with Brigitte Bardot in 1972.
In her book It’s All About the Dress: What I Learned in Forty Years About Men, Women, Sex and Fashion (2011) by fashion designer Vicky Tiel, Tiel recalls attending a dinner in Paris, France with Warren Beatty, Brigitte Bardot, and an unnamed Frenchman. At the end of the meal Bardot stated “Now you three men must race the elevator of my building up to zee sixth floor. Whoever wins gets to sleep with me!” Tiel and Bardot stepped off the elevator on the sixth floor; a red-faced Warren Beatty arrived first and was led by Bardot into her bedroom. The next evening Warren threw a party for Brigitte, but she never appeared; and that seems to have been the beginning and end of their relationship.
Les pétroleuses/Frenchie King (1971), a western comedy co-starring Claudia Cardinale and Michael J. Pollard, came near the end of Brigitte Bardot’s movie career.
Ex-husband Roger Vadim directed Love on a Pillow (1962) co-stars Robert Hossein and Brigitte Bardot again in Bardot’s second-last movie, Don Juan (Or if Don Juan Were a Woman) (1973). When Roger Vadim died of cancer in February 2000, his four ex-wives including Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda, attended his funeral.
Actor Laurent Vergez had a small role on-screen in Don Juan (Or if Don Juan Were a Woman), which co-starred Robert Walker Jr,. Robert Hossein, and Mathieu Carriere – but a larger one off-screen – he too had a romance with Brigitte Bardot. Bardot and Laurent Vergez recorded the duet Vous ma lady (1973) and Tu es venu mon amour (1973).
(Brigitte Bardot 1968 Photo: Michel Bernanau)
In 1973, 39-year-old Brigitte Bardot retired from acting after acquiring 40+ film credits over her 19 year movie career. The next year Playboy ran a nude photo shoot with her to celebrate her 40th birthday.
Bardot’s love affairs continued through the 1970’s and 1980’s, as did her struggles with depression and suicide attempts fueled by drinking. From 1975-1979 her younger lover Miroslav Brozek, a Czechoslovakian sculptor, lived at her Saint Tropez home.
Bardot began a relationship in 1982 with Allain Bougrain-duBourg, a French TV producer she’d first met in 1977.
After breaking up with Bougrain-duBourg in August 1983, on her 49th birthday the next month Brigitte took either sleeping pills or tranquilizers with wine, and went down to the beach near her home. She was later pulled out of the surf and her stomach pumped at a local clinic.
A vegetarian and an animal rights activist, Bardot concentrated on various animal welfare causes and protested inhumane treatment of animals in countries across the world. At times she had 40+ rescued and adopted animals on her Saint Tropez property in France. The Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals was established in 1986.
(Brigitte Bardot Photo: Juliana Dacoregio)
Brigitte Bardot wrote 5 books, including her autobiography Initiales B.B. (1996), in which she disclosed much of her negative feelings around her pregnancy, impending motherhood, and lack of maternal feelings. She said she would have preferred to have a dog and referred to the unborn baby as a “cancerous tumour”. Her son Nicolas Charrier and ex-husband Jacques Charrier sued her; Bardot was ordered to pay damages to Nicolas for the emotional hurt she caused him, and to Jacques for violation of privacy. The following year, Jacques Charrier’s book Ma Reponse a B.B. (1997), reproduced letters sent by Brigitte Bardot to him during their marriage, and Bardot sued Charrier.
Unsurprisingly, Bardot and her son Nicolas Charrier were once again estranged.
It was disclosed to the press in 1985 that around 1983-1984, Bardot was diagnosed with breast cancer. After at first being in denial about it, she underwent successful surgery and radiation treatment for breast cancer in 1984.
In June 1992 Brigitte met businessman Bernard d’Ormale and they began living together. D’Ormale told People that two weeks after they met, Brigitte had called her estranged son Nicolas Charrier – who had not invited her to his 1984 wedding to Norwegian model Anne-line Bjerkanin – and arranged a visit to Switzerland so Nicolas (and his two daughters Anna and Thea, Bardot’s granddaughters) could meet Bernard. While they were in Switzerland, Bardot quietly married fourth husband D’Ormale on August 16, 1992.
A couple of months later, in November 1992, Bardot once again took an overdose of sleeping pills and was taken to hospital; although her husband said it was not a deliberate overdose and her stomach did not have to be pumped.
Well known for her right-wing views in France, Bardot was fined several times for inciting racial hatred with her views about Muslim immigration in that country.
In 2009 Brigitte Bardot told Paris Match that “No, I’m not a good grandmother. They (her granddaughters) live in Norway with their father (Nicolas), they don’t speak French and we don’t have the opportunity to see one another.”
(Brigitte Bardot 2002: Cdrik b06)
Bardot became a great-grandmother in 2014, and her son sent her a picture of the baby; a rare communication.
Author Ginette Vincendeau who wrote the biography Brigitte Bardot: The Life, The Legend, The Movies (2014) said that Brigitte Bardot still lived in La Madrague in Saint Tropez, France; she now walked with a cane because of arthritis, but had refused to have hip replacement surgery.
Bardot and husband Bernard D’Ormale celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in August 2025, four months before she died at the age of 91.
Note: This article was first published in 2016 as Celebrating Seniors – Brigitte Bardot Turns 82. It has been updated.
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