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Brigitte Bardot’s final posts gave fans a glimpse at the screen icon doing what she loved best – and looking remarkably well – before her death aged 91.
The Hollywood star, who passed away after a hospital stay in Toulon, was best known as an international sex symbol before turning to animal rights activism.
Brigitte set up The Brigitte Bardot Foundation, which works to support and send aid to shelters, animal rescues and sterilisation campaigns for stray animals.
The most recent upload from the foundation’s Instagram page shows a video of Brigitte with a Doberman named Urphe who was looking for a new home.
Brigitte is among several volunteers at the foundation who were filmed spending time with Urphe, who moved to a shelter after his owner had to move into a nursing home.
Another recent post celebrating Christmas showed Brigitte kissing another rescue dog, as the team at the foundation wished everyone well.
The post read: ‘CHRISTMAS. All the teams at the Brigitte Bardot Foundation wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Thank you for your support! Take care of yourselves, your loved ones, and your pets.’
The animal rights charity also announced her passing on Sunday morning with a statement.
It read: ‘The Brigitte Bardot Foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Madame Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned actress and singer, who chose to abandon her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare and her foundation.’
The organisation did not specify the time or place where she died.
Known as the original ‘Sex Kitten’, Brigitte shot to international notoriety with her role in 1956 film And God Created Woman, which was directed by her first husband Roger Vadim.
That turn as a voluptuous, hedonistic orphan made her an object of edgy fascination for millions, even though the film itself got a mixed reaction from critics.
Described by Time magazine as France’s ‘most ogled export’, her sex appeal was further fuelled by her outings as a model.
Following the news of her death, French president Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Brigitte, saying she was ‘a legend who embodied a life of freedom’.
He wrote on X: ‘Her films, her voice, her dazzling fame, her initials, her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom.
‘A French existence, a universal radiance. She touched us. We mourn a legend of the century’.
Brigitte had suffered a great deal of ill health in recent months, and was frequently admitted to hospital.
In October, she was forced to release a statement confirming she was not dead, after an influencer put out a false report.
Brigitte took to X to announce: ‘I don’t know who the idiot is who started this fake news about my disappearance this evening, but know that I am fine and that I have no intention of bowing out. A word to the wise.’
She was soon back at her home in Saint-Tropez following three weeks of treatment for an unspecified condition.
The star, who married and divorced three times before settling with her fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale in 1992, retired from acting in 1973 to focus on her passionate animal rights activism.
But she drew controversy with her engagement in far-right politics, which saw her endorse National Rally leader Marine Le Pen and be fined six times for inciting racial hatred.
The star was reclusive in her final years, instead preferring to remain out of the spotlight at her secluded and very private property in Saint Tropez.
Born on September 28, 1934, in Paris, Brigitte initially trained as a ballet dancer at the National Superior Conservatory of Paris for Music and Dance.
After quitting acting in 1973, Bardot took her life in a different direction.
She said: ‘I gave my youth and my beauty to men, I am now giving and my experience, the best of myself, to animals.’
Setting up the Brigitte Bardot Foundation in 1986, she was a dedicated vegetarian and regularly campaigned for the rights of animals.
In 2013 she threatened to request Russian citizenship and leave France after a pair of 42-year-old elephants were refused treatment for tuberculosis in a Lyon zoo.
She referred to France as a ‘graveyard for animals’ but ultimately won the case and saved the two former circus animals.
In 2001 she also donated $140,000 over two years to sterilise and adopt 300,000 of Bucharest’s stray dogs.
Not all of her activism work since quitting acting was quite so well received.
In 2004 she was convicted by a French court and fined £4,000 for ‘inciting racial hatred’ in her book A Scream in the Silence.
She was a keen supporter of the far-right Marine Le Pen. At the 2017 French elections, she told people not to vote for Emmanuel Macron because he had a ‘coldness’ in his ‘steel eyes’.
