There are a lot of guys my age on the board who will have, I guess, somewhat confused memories of Brigitte. Not quite old enough to understand at the time. And then she was gone, and busy looking after animals. So I am aware of her, but I’ll leave it to others to expand on her true impact.
This is my fondest memory of her: the original version of Je T’aime - Moi Non Plus (with Serge, of course).
j
I don’t know how old you are…I’m in my mid-40s and, while I know her name, I couldn’t tell you anything about her. It seems I wasn’t missing much…she doesn’t seem like a real great person. I don’t want to shit on this thread with quotes and links, but her wiki page has no shortage of passages along the lines of “fined six times for inciting racial hatred”.
I’m in my mid sixties. She was an icon for those (yeah, men) slightly older than me. So you (and I) are missing quite a lot - but, as you point out, not all of it good.
j
She was my Mom’s age. And at 67 now, I’m pretty near the center of Doper demographics.
As a kid / tween I knew she had the the reputation of being the now-aging epitome of cinema sex goddess, while Raquel Welch was the current flavor du jour. By the time I was a late teen or college kid with direct personal interest in sex goddesses, somebody like Farrah Fawcett or Christy Brinkley had taken on that role. Though that was also an era where TV was displacing cinema as the main venue for popular stardom.
The rest of her life was sorta irrelevant to the entertainment industry. She had tremendous name recognition, but it didn’t translate into ongoing public celebrity.
She was alive and Marilyn Monroe was dead. But both names were buzzphrases for “super hot” that lasted long after they were super gone.
It’s unsurprising to me that she spent the rest of her years in a mix of what she thought of as do-goodery and attempts to somehow parlay her name into income. Also unsurprising that at least some of that was pretty unsavory. Celebrity doesn’t select for calm foresightful deep thinkers. Neither does wealth.
IMO YMMV.
I’m 78 and remember lusting after Bardot along with every other boy or young man at the time. I was too young to be able to see her movies in the 50s/60s, but her face was everywhere. Then life took over and I have never seen one of her films.
Old white racist dies. RIP.
I first learned about her via Allan Sherman:
You came the wrong way, Old King Louie
And now you ain’t got far to go
Too bad you won’t be here to see
That great big Eiffel Tower,
Or Brigitte Bardot
…except I misheard her name as “bridge at Bardot.”
I am 66. Yeah she was part of the zeitgeist of the hubba hubba punchlines that knew mainly because I was the youngest of five. I don’t think she ever had many who admired her as a person? Her age contemporary, apparently born within eight days of each other, Sophia Loren, was around longer and in more American movies, enough that I got old enough to understand why she was considered such a goddess. More so to young me than Monroe was. Still alive she is and more widely admired as a talented actor and a person of the two.
Bardot is also mentioned in the lyrics of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” With her death, there are only (I believe) three people mentioned in the song that are still alive - Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, and Bernie Goetz.
It’s possible I missed someone though.
As the song says, “Fame, if you win it, comes and goes in a minute…”
I guess it’s human nature to downplay and even scorn the idols of our parents’ generation. 
I was 12 (1975) when I discovered a biography of Bardot in the public library. There were pictures. ‘Nuff said.
The light read Erasmus with Freckles was turned into a movie that nobody wanted to make and nobody wanted to see, about a child math prodigy who wants to meet Brigitte Bardot. The only way she’d agree to do her cameo required the title be changed to Dear Brigitte. I remember it for featuring a Beethoven sweatshirt (which was a thing briefly in the mid-sixties) and Glynis Johns, who I always found attractive.
Googling “Beatles Bridget Bardot” gives a lot of stories of the band’s obsession with her.
And in Message of Love, by the Pretenders.
When love walks in the room
Everybody stand up
Oh, it’s good, good, good
Like Brigitte Bardot
Last week I was in Buzios, Brazil which was one of her favourite vacation spots. Her name is plastered on everything and there’s a statue of her there.
Another lyric, from “Du spielst 'ne tolle rolle” (which later had its tune reused as “Those Hazy-Lazy-Crazy Days of Summer”).
Ich sah Dich bummeln im Bikini durch Milano
Ich sah Dich tanzen auf 'nem Tisch
Ich sah Dich boxen mit 'ner Freundin der Mangano
Dagegen ist Brigitte Bardot ein kleiner Fisch.
Compared to you, Brigitte Bardot is a small fish.
One of the lines in the lyrics mentions “British Beatlemania”, and two of the four Beatles are still alive. I guess that sort of counts.
She had lovely hair. Her bangs style has been held as an ideal for probably longer than my lifetime.
She was so ahead of her time with her gorgeous hair! Tons of it, butter yellow, just-tumbled-out-of-bed hair. Even in the 50’s, when Mamie Eisenhower bangs, pointy bras, and girdles were the thing.
The only movie of hers I’ve seen is And God Created Woman. Pretty good, and she was good in it.
But, yeah, she didn’t have much going after her movie career was over, and what was going was pretty off-putting.
The hair was dyed, though. Naturally she was brunette.