Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot has been married four times. Her first marriage was to film director Roger Vadim in 1952 when she was just 18. They divorced after five years but maintained professional relations even after that.

She married actor Jacques Charrier in 1959 and had a son with him. She was not a devoted mother and her son was raised by Charrier’s family after Bardot divorced him in 1962.

She tied the knot for the third time with German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs in 1966. The couple divorced three years later.

Brigitte Bardot was born on 28 September 1934 to Louis Bardot and Anne-Marie. Her father was an engineer engaged in the family business. Her family was an upper middle-class Roman Catholic one.

As a child, she attended Cours Hattemer, a private school, and also received classes at home. Her mother enrolled her in dance classes when she was young and Brigitte realized that she was naturally talented at dancing.

She was accepted to the Conservatoire de Paris in 1947. She attended ballet classes by Russian choreographer Boris Knyazev for three years.

Beautiful and graceful, she began modeling as a teenager and appeared on the cover of ‘Elle’ in 1950. She came to the notice of the film director Roger Vadim who arranged for her to audition for a role in ‘Les lauriers sont coupés’.

Brigitte got the role but the film was never made. However, this incident made her seriously consider acting as a career.

Brigitte Bardot made her debut in a 1952 comedy film, ‘Le Trou Normand’. She was well liked by the audience who were taken in by her captivating beauty and she was soon flooded with more film offers.

During her early career she mostly appeared in light, romantic dramas. She could play the role of an innocent girl-next-door with the same aplomb she portrayed a sexy siren. She also played small roles in English language films in the 1950s.

She found success quite early on in her career and appeared in 17 films between 1952 and 1956. Married by now, she was encouraged by her husband to explore different types of roles.

In 1956, she was cast in ‘And God Created Woman’ opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant. It was a serious film about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting. The film proved to be a great success and catapulted Bardot to international stardom.

In 1962, she appeared in the film ‘A Very Private Affair’, where she played the role of a young girl who falls in love with her friend’s husband. It was a semi-biographical film of her life, and she earned much acclaim for this role.

After retiring from show business Brigitte Bardot ventured into animal rights activism. She became a vegetarian in the 1980s and established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals in 1986. She auctioned off several of her personal belongings, including her jewelry, to raise funds for her foundation.

She strongly opposes the consumption of horse meat and condemned seal hunting in Canada during a visit to that country with Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

She has a deep love for dogs and has donated more than $140,000 for a mass sterilization and adoption program for Bucharest's stray dogs. She also writes letters to well known authorities condemning practices that inflict unnecessary cruelty on animals.