Khaberni - French actress Brigitte Bardot passed away at the age of 91 at her home in southern France, leaving behind a cinematic legacy that spanned decades.
Bardot was born in Paris on September 28, 1934, into a middle-class family, where she joined the Paris Music Conservatory in 1949 to study ballet.
She appeared on the cover of Elle magazine at the age of 15, which opened the doors to cinema for her and she fell in love with screenwriter Roger Vadim, who became her first husband in 1952.
Bardot achieved global fame through the movie "And God Created Woman" in 1956 directed by her then-husband Vadim, where she portrayed a free-thinking teenage girl. The film grossed $4 million in the United States, a record for foreign films at the time, despite being banned in several U.S. states.
The late actress delivered her finest performance in Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" in 1963, by which time her salary reached the highest level among French actresses in 1958.
She also released her first music album in 1963, and recorded the song "I love you... me neither" with her friend Serge Gainsbourg in 1967, but it was not released at that time due to objections from her then-German billionaire husband Gunter Sachs over its controversial and bold content.
Bardot retired from acting in 1973 at the age of 39 after her last film, and established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals in 1986, raising half a million dollars in 1987 from a jewellery auction for the foundation, and wrote to world leaders protesting the cruelty towards animals.
Brigitte Bardot was married four times, with the last to Bernard d'Ormale, an advisor to the leader of the right-wing National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
She was fined five times between 1997 and 2008 on charges of inciting racial hatred, and she and her publisher paid 28,000 British pounds in damages to her son Nicolas Charrier in 1997 due to her derogatory comments about her pregnancy with him in her memoirs.
