French actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot in a dog pound in Nice (southern France), holding one of 143 puppies seized by customs officers in a Hungarian van, on December 28, 2005.
AFP / Valery Hache
It was a bullish nature that proved costly as she courted controversy with anti-LGBTQIA+, misogynistic, anti-Islamic, and anti-Semitic views.
In total, Bardot was fined a total of six times for “inciting racial hatred”, incurring a cost of more than A$86,916 (NZ$99,768).
Her near-constant court appearances became so recurrent that a prosecutor in 2008 said she had grown weary of charging Bardot.
Bardot also endorsed France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen, comparing her to a “modern Joan of Arc”.
Often asked to remark on a legacy so enamoured with her jeune fille looks, Bardot never feared aging.
Photographs displayed as part of an exhibition devoted to French star Brigitte Bardot at the MA30 Espace Landowski museum in Boulogne-Billancourt, west of Paris, on September 24, 2009.
AFP / Francois Guillot
“The other day,” she said in 2012, into her mid-70s.
“I came across … And God Created Woman on TV, which I haven’t seen in ages.
I told myself that that girl wasn’t bad. But it was like it was someone other than me.
