Brigitte Bardot dies at 91, having spent 52 years away from film

Brigitte Bardot died at 91 after half a century away from the movies

Brigitte Bardot has died at the age of 91. Le Figaro announced the news on December 28, and the figure that best defines her is not her age but the other one: she had not made a film in 52 years. Her film career lasted twenty years; her second life, devoted to animal rights and politics, lasted more than twice as long. This autumn she had been hospitalized several times for a "serious illness," and on November 24 Nice-Matin reported a new admission to hospital in the French city of Toulon, just over a month after a first operation. She died on Holy Innocents' Day. Depending on how you look at it, that is either a symbol or a bad joke.

Who was Brigitte Bardot and why did she quit film at 39?

She began as a model and dancer, and within a few years she had her first film role. It was her husband, director Roger Vadim, who turned her into an international star with And God Created Woman. From there came a career that today can be counted in units: 47 films, more than 60 recorded songs, and a collaboration with Jean-Luc Godard on Contempt that cemented her fame.

The truly anomalous fact is the retirement. In 1973, at 39 and with the entire market at her feet, Bardot walked away. It was not a hiatus: she never came back. What in any other career would have been the start of a second act —character roles, producing, directing— was here locked shut.

She devoted herself to animal rights. That gesture, which today is dismissed as a biographical footnote, was probably the most profitable decision she made in her adult life: it gave her a public identity that did not depend on her looks or the studios.

47 films and 60 songs: the tally of a 20th-century icon

Her career fits on a napkin: twenty years of work, some fifty titles, and an aesthetic influence that went far beyond the box office. She was a style icon and a symbol of the free woman, and her image was replicated in magazines, on runways and in later generations of actresses. Not much, some will say. Quite a lot, the market replies: the Bardot brand sustained itself for decades.

Some comparisons circulate with almost forensic precision. According to one widely repeated calculation, her height, 1.70 meters, was well above the average for women of the time: 1.62 in Spain and 1.64 in France. It is not a decisive fact, but it partly explains why that figure broke the mold.

The artistic verdict, on the other hand, remains open. Part of the audience argues that her acting talent was always below her photogenic appeal, and that her foray into auteur cinema produced titles weighed down by questionable decisions.

From symbol of the free woman to political target in France

Bardot's final years were not those of a retired and revered star. She was an uncomfortable figure. Part of the public places her as a reference point for the European identitarian right: she is credited with harsh criticism of immigration, Euroscepticism, rejection of contemporary feminism and distrust of vaccines. Her supporters read this as consistency; her critics, as the turn of an actress who mistook individual freedom for anger.

The controversy also touched her own biography. In an interview with Gala magazine at 87, she recounted that she refused to get vaccinated against yellow fever, which was required to enter some African countries, and that her doctor at the time wrote her a fake certificate. "I went and came back in perfect shape," she said. The anecdote sums up her relationship with the rules well: she did not argue with them, she dodged them.

That mix —beauty, a timely retirement, activism and a political drift— is what makes it impossible to reduce her to a label. And it is also what has turned her death into a battlefield where each side recruits whatever suits it.

Why does her figure still divide the public in two?

Because each of those camps has material to work with. Those who want to see a free woman have the retirement at 39 and the rejection of the industry. Those who want to see a reactionary have the statements of the last three decades. Neither picture is false, and neither explains the other.

What falls outside the squabble is the most measurable part: 47 films, more than 60 songs, and an entire second career devoted to animals that lasted longer than the first. Few people change professions at 39 and sustain the change for half a century.

It will be a long time before another actress emerges who combines that visual impact with such a clean exit. Although, given today's industry and its algorithms, betting on who the next French phenomenon will be is pure guesswork.