Brigitte Bardot Loved Animals
French film legend Brigitte Bardot died this week at 91. The pouty “sex kitten” appeared in over 50 films in a 20-year career, which she abruptly abandoned in 1973. For the remaining decades Bardot devoted her life to animal welfare.
“When I was making films,” Bardot told the New York Times in 1994, “I discovered there was a difference between loving animals and fighting for them — and I didn’t have time to fight for them. So that’s why I gave up cinema. I stopped making films to look after animals.”
And look after them she did. In 1977 Bardot traveled to the arctic to advocate for baby seals massacred in the fur trade. In 1986, the former actress sold off jewelry and other belongings to raise funding to launch the Fondation Brigitte Bardot, an organization devoted to animal welfare and political lobbying – and which is still going strong today.
Her foundation campaigned against slaughterhouse abuses; helped set up sanctuaries for bears, elephants, and other wild animals rescued from circuses and substandard zoos; and funded spay-and-neuter programs for dogs and cats in France, Eastern Europe, and India. “I gave my beauty and my youth to men,” she said at a 1987 auction of her memorabilia to fund the foundation, “and now I am giving my wisdom and experience to animals.”
Bardot campaigned against the inhumane slaughter methods associated with halal and kosher butchering, a cause that incensed Muslim and Jewish groups and which led to multiple lawsuits and fines levied against the former actress.
Bardot often appealed directly to heads of state for the cause. In 1999 she wrote to China president Jiang Zemin, remonstrating the PRC for “torturing bears and killing the world’s last tigers and rhinos to make aphrodisiacs.” In 2017 she declared Trump “unfit for office” after his administration's “shameful actions” in authorizing imports of Zimbabwean elephant hunting trophies.
Bardot lived the last 30 years of her life with her fourth and last husband, Bernard d'Ormale, in St. Tropez. They shared the property with dogs, cats, geese, sheep, goats. You can see many of them in the Fondation Brigitte Bardot’s tribute to her life here.
Photo credit: Fondation Brigitte Bardot
