Brigitte Bardot’s Death Sparks Reckoning With Her Legacy

Brigitte Bardot, the French actress whose name became synonymous with glamour, sensuality, and a certain brand of rebellious modernity, died on Sunday, December 28, 2025, at the age of 91. Her passing marks the end of a chapter in French cultural history—one that’s as dazzling as it is deeply complicated. Bardot’s story, as reported by The Forward and the BBC, is not just about fame and beauty, but about the tangled threads of celebrity, activism, and controversy that defined her long public life.

Bardot first burst onto the world stage in 1956 with the release of "Et Dieu…créa la femme" (“And God Created Woman”), a film that catapulted her to international stardom. Over a 17-year movie career, she became a pop phenomenon—her initials, BB, pronounced “baby,” became a shorthand for a new kind of liberated, postwar French femininity. Simone de Beauvoir, in a now-famous Esquire essay, described Bardot as “the most perfect specimen of the ambiguous nymph.” Bardot’s last film, "L’Histoire très bonne et très joyeuses de Colinot," came out in 1973, after which she retired from acting, but not from public life.

For the next 52 years, Bardot remained a fixture in French culture, but the nature of her celebrity shifted. In 1969, she was named the model for Marianne, the mythic figure who personifies the French Republic and its revolutionary ideals. Her likeness appeared on postage stamps and busts in city halls across France, a symbol of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But by 1985, another iconic actress, Catherine Deneuve, replaced Bardot as Marianne, reflecting a shift in both popular taste and political values.

Where Deneuve became known for her support of progressive causes—she signed the 1971 “Manifesto of 343 Women” supporting abortion rights and joined the so-called “republican wall” against the far-right in 2002—Bardot’s politics took a sharply different turn. As The Forward notes, Bardot’s views veered ever more rightward after her retirement. In 1992, she attended a dinner in Saint-Tropez hosted by Jany Le Pen, wife of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. There, she met Jean d’Ormale, a close advisor to Le Pen, who would become her fourth and final husband.

Le Pen himself once remarked, “Compared to Bardot, Marilyn Monroe looked like a bar waitress.” Bardot, in her memoir B.B., described Le Pen as “a charming and intelligent man who was revolted by many of the same things I was.” The two bonded over a nostalgia for a France “that was clean and proper,” in Le Pen’s words, and over a shared passion for animal rights—an issue that would become central to Bardot’s activism.

But Bardot’s campaign for animal welfare soon became entangled with a much darker strain of xenophobia. Beginning in the late 1990s and extending into the early 2000s, Bardot repeatedly railed against the Muslim practice of halal slaughter, which she equated with “ritual sacrifice.” Her language, as the BBC and The Forward both detail, quickly crossed the line from animal advocacy into open hostility toward Muslims and immigrants. In a 2014 incident, Bardot was widely criticized for describing kosher and halal traditions as “ritual sacrifice.” Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, condemned her remarks as “deeply offensive and a slur against the Jewish people,” noting that Bardot’s “long-standing support for the far right and for discrimination against minorities in France shows a constant disdain for human rights instead.”

French courts repeatedly found Bardot guilty of inciting racial hatred, with convictions and fines handed down in 1997, 1998, 2004, and again as recently as 2021. In one notorious case from 2004, Bardot’s book praised previous generations for “push[ing] out invaders” and decried “the mixing of genes,” according to the BBC. Her sixth fine, in 2021, came after she described the Hindu Tamil population of the French island La Reunion as “natives who still have savage genes” and referenced “the cannibalism of past centuries.”

Bardot’s controversial statements weren’t limited to immigrants or religious minorities. In her 2003 book A Cry in the Silence, she attacked gay people, referring to them as “cheap f*ggots or circus freaks” and lamenting that contemporary LGBTQ+ individuals no longer hid their sexuality. She wrote, “Current gay men jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air, and with their little castrato voices moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through.” Bardot also dismissed the #MeToo movement, telling reporters in 2018, “The vast majority [of women accusing men] are being hypocritical and ridiculous. Lots of actresses try to play the tease with producers to get a role... I was never the victim of sexual harassment. And I found it charming when men told me I was beautiful or I had a nice little backside.”

The full weight of Bardot’s legacy came into sharp relief following her death, as tributes and reckonings poured in from around the world. One such moment involved Chappell Roan, the American singer known for hits like “Pink Pony Club” and “Red Wine Supernova.” Upon hearing of Bardot’s death, Roan posted on Instagram, “She was my inspiration for red wine supernova. Rest in peace Ms. Bardot.” The song itself opens with the lyric, “She was a Playboy, Brigitte Bardot / She showed me things I didn’t know.”

However, after learning more about Bardot’s political views, Roan issued a swift and candid apology, stating, “Holy shit I did not know all that insane shit Ms. Bardot stood for obvs I do not condone this. very disappointing to learn.” Roan’s public walk-back reflects the tension many feel when confronting the full scope of Bardot’s story—a tension between the allure of her on-screen persona and the reality of her later activism and rhetoric.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in a eulogy posted on X (formerly Twitter) on December 29, 2025, captured the complexity of Bardot’s legacy. He wrote, “With her films, her voice, her dazzling glory, her initials (BB), her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, and her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom…We mourn a legend of the century.”

Yet, as The Forward pointedly observed, Bardot also embodied “other sorrows and passions that cast a lengthening and darkening shadow over this century.” The story of Brigitte Bardot is not just one of stardom and style, but a cautionary tale about the enduring power—and peril—of celebrity in shaping public discourse and values.

As France and the world reflect on Bardot’s passing, her legacy remains as controversial and unresolved as ever—a mirror of the contradictions and challenges of modern culture itself.