Brigitte Bardot: the complicated story of a beauty icon
Paramedics responded to a health emergency at Bardot's home on Wednesday morning
© Getty Images
Emergency services were called to the home of legendary French actress Brigitte Bardot on July 19, 2023. The 88-year-old experienced difficulty breathing, her husband Bernard d’Ormale told local French newspaper Var-Matin. D'Ormale explained that first responders put her on oxygen to help her breathe and monitored her for a while. He reassured reporters that she never lost consciousness and that her pulse and blood pressure are fine, "but things remain fragile."
"Like all people of a certain age, she can no longer bear the heat," d’Ormale theorized. "It happens at 88, she must not make unnecessary efforts." Bardot and d’Ormale live in Saint Tropez in the South of France, where temperatures have been approaching 100°F.
Brigitte Bardot, often referred to by her initials B.B., was one of the world’s biggest stars in the ‘50s and ‘60s, pushing the envelope in more ways than one. With a career starting at just 15 years old, Bardot became so much more than the 40+ films and numerous songs she recorded; she was mythologized as a beauty icon, a symbol of France’s liberty, and a new post-war woman.
Yet, despite admiration for her beauty, Bardot was mistreated throughout her career and struggled with severe depression and alcoholism. She came to dislike her iconography and sought to destroy it, which came with good things like her activism for animals, but also spiraled into a string of controversies regarding her far-right political beliefs.
Intrigued? Click through to learn more about Brigitte Bardot, the living legend carrying the burden of recent history’s contradictions regarding women, Hollywood, and freedom.
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