Brigitte Bardot's Troubling Real-Life Story

Brigitte Bardot has been mythologized by the masses since her breakthrough role in her ex-husband Roger Vadim's 1956 film "And God Created Woman." Through her collaborations with iconic singer Serge Gainsbourg and iconic director Jean-Luc Godard, the French singer-actor became synonymous with iconic French beauty, hedonism, and sexual liberation. Whether she was dancing on tables, singing about pleasure, or simply sitting around in tights and a striped top, Bardot was the subject of much admiration and intrigue.

But Bardot's surface-level identity was one she neither embraced nor accepted — hence why she turned her back on the glamorous world of movies later in life. While so many people wanted to be her, or at least to be close to her, Bardot felt crushed under the weight of her acting career and the sense of emptiness that came with it. Sick of being seen — even in a flattering light — the actor-turned-activist worked instead to be heard, for better or worse. 

Bardot's behind-the-scenes reality is far removed from the woman who danced, laughed, and enticed the male gaze on the movie screens. Starting in childhood and continuing for nearly nine decades, Bardot's life has been marked by bitterness, despair, and cruelty. Of course, Bardot is not a faultless victim; she has found herself in numerous courtrooms for hurtful and prejudiced remarks throughout her life, as noted by the Daily News. Still, here is a glimpse at the tragedy and pain that has marred the life of the former screen siren.

Brigitte Bardot grew up in a seven-bedroom apartment in an affluent corner of Paris, but her childhood wasn't entirely rosy. According to Barnett Singer's 2013 biography "Brigitte Bardot: A Biography," her parents, Louis Bardot and Anne-Marie Mucel, ran a strict, Catholic, conservative household. They reportedly dictated what Brigitte and her sister, Mijanou, wore each day and demanded the two girls maintain proper etiquette. Mucel exercised control over who her daughters played with, which left Brigitte feeling inferior at best, and isolated and lonely at worst. Louis and Mucel even killed Brigitte's beloved rabbit, Noiraud, and served him for dinner — which likely played a role in her later decision to become an animal rights activist (more on that later).

As Brigitte told Singer, she and Mijanou once accidentally broke a vase in their family apartment. Their father whipped them 20 times each as punishment. But what stung even more, according to Brigitte, was that he took the punishment beyond the physical and into the psychological by ignoring his two daughters. He and Mucel began addressing the two girls with the French pronoun "vous," which is used to address strangers and formal acquaintances.

Although such incidents had a profound impact on Brigitte, she has since been able to find some merit in their parenting style. "My parents gave me a strict upbringing," she once said (via Biography), "which at times has caused me to suffer distress but today I am grateful to them for it."

Brigitte Bardot married Roger Vadim, who was six years her senior, when she turned 18 years old, per the Sydney Morning Herald. The pair met when Bardot was just 16 years old. He made his directorial debut four years later with Bardot in a starring role in the 1956 film "And God Created Woman." Bardot's role in the movie turned her into a "sex symbol" overnight and ultimately created the hypersexualized image that followed her entire film career. Bardot then divorced Vadim and embarked on an affair with her married "And God Created Woman" co-star, Jean-Louis Trintignant.

As Bardot wrote in her 1996 autobiography, "Initials B.B." (via the Sydney Morning Herald), she had four husbands and more than 100 lovers. "I had a visceral need to be loved, to be desired, to belong body and soul to the man I admire, whom I love, whom I respect,″ Bardot wrote in "Initials B.B." (via AP News), while discussing her affairs with men including French crooner Serge Gainsbourg and American actor Warren Beatty. She also wrote about being physically abused by actor Jacques Charrier, who fathered her only son. She has been married to Bernard d'Ormale since 1992, as noted by People.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

Brigitte Bardot had her only child, a son named Nicolas, with her second husband Jacques Charrier. Detailing her 1959 pregnancy in her memoir "Initials B.B.," Bardot wrote (via the the Independent), "I looked at my flat, slender belly in the mirror like a dear friend upon whom I was about to close a coffin lid." She went on to reveal that she had punched herself in the stomach repeatedly and asked her doctor for morphine in an attempt to terminate the pregnancy. To top it all off, she referred to her then-unborn child as a "cancerous tumor" and added that she would have "preferred to give birth to a little dog." Following the release of the memoir, Nicolas and the elder Charrier sued Bardot for the remarks. A French court ordered her to pay £28,000 — approximately $38,000 — in damages and that certain passages of the book should be prefaced with warning labels.

Charrier reportedly denied Bardot access to their son once he was born. Nicolas did not invite Bardot to his wedding in 1982, and they have gone as much as a decade without seeing one another. Still, they reportedly reconciled in the 1990s, after the birth of his first child and her first grandchild. "I'm not made to be a mother," Bardot once said (via the Independent). "I'm not adult enough – I know it's horrible to have to admit that, but I'm not adult enough to take care of a child."

In the spring of 1973, a 38-year-old Brigitte Bardot quit the film industry for good. "In the beginning, I enjoyed having people talking about me, but very quickly, it suffocated and destroyed me," she wrote in "Tears of Battle: An Animal Rights Memoir." "Life could not possibly be as pointless as what I was seeing ... I was embodying the very image of frivolity: I was having fun, I was playing, singing, dancing, loving. I was living, but I never neglected how important certain things were. The heart of my life has never been superficial; on the contrary, it was always quite serious."

Discussing her decision to leave the industry with The Guardian, Bardot drew a parallel to Marilyn Monroe. "The majority of great actresses met tragic ends," she said. "When I said goodbye to this job, to this life of opulence and glitter, images and adoration, the quest to be desired, I was saving my life."

According to The Guardian, Bardot proceeded to give away her villa in Saint Tropez, moved into a small house, and surrounded herself with rescued animals and run-down cars. "She did not get much affection from her parents, and when we started dating, she didn't want jewels, but a dog," Roger Vadim once said of Bardot (via People). "She was always allergic to fame, power and everything that connoted success. The innocence and honesty of animals reassured her."

In 1983 — exactly a decade after she left the movie business — Brigitte Bardot was diagnosed with breast cancer, according to Page Six. She reportedly refused treatment for the cancer at first, resigning herself to what she believed was her fatal fate. She wrote about the diagnosis in a letter to her friend, the French actor Marina Vlady, who then flew to Bardot's villa in Saint Tropez and convinced her to undergo treatment and share the diagnosis with the public, per IMDB. In 1985, the Los Angeles Times reported that Bardot had undergone successful surgery and radiation treatment.

Despite no longer having breast cancer, Bardot has experienced other health issues in the decades since — particularly double degenerative arthritis. According to Vanity Fair, she could receive an operation to help with the condition, but she was too afraid of the anesthetic — and perhaps its potential to be ineffective — to do so. In 2014, she told the Daily Mail that she needed to use walking sticks to get around.

Still, Bardot has withstood the pain of her past. "I really wanted to die at certain periods in my life," she once said (via People). "Death was like love, a romantic escape. I took pills because I didn't want to throw myself off my balcony and know people would photograph me lying dead below." Her first husband, Roger Vadim, once said that "every birthday is a test for her, and it's usually a desperate time."