Brigitte Bardot, France’s outspoken sex symbol of the 1950s and 1960s, who has died at the age of 91, tended to shoot from the hip.
A passionate defender of animal rights who also supported the far-right, here are some of her most famous (or infamous) utterances:
– On fame –
– “Fame? You can shove it,” she said in 1971, a few years before she announced her retirement from cinema.
– “I tried to make myself as beautiful as possible and even then I found myself ugly. I hated going out. I was afraid of not being what people expected me to be. Today at my age I don’t give a damn.”
– On men –
– “I knew my career was based only on my looks, so I decided to leave movies the way I always left men — before they could leave me.”
– “I’ve always done what I wanted… I know I’ve got bigger balls than a lot of men. They could learn a lot from me.”
– On motherhood –
– “It was like a tumour that fed on me, that I carried in my afflicted flesh waiting for the blessed moment when they finally took it out of me,” she wrote of her pregnancy with her son Nicolas.
After the “nightmare” of his birth, “I had to take lifelong responsibility for the cause of my misery.”
(Nicolas was raised by his father).
– On humanity –
– “I don’t care about the condition of women. The condition of animals is far more preoccupying.”
– “I won’t hide my misanthropy! It exists and it is justified. Look at humanity, it is horrible.”
– On animals –
– “To possess a fur coat is to wear a cemetery on one’s back,” she said in a 1994 swipe at Italian star Sophia Loren for accepting “blood money” to promote fur coats.
– “You stress human misery,” she wrote to Pope Francis in 2017, “oddly favouring Muslim migration to the detriment of Christians from the Middle East, but more miserable than the fate of these people is that of animals.”
– On Muslims –
– “I am against the Islamisation of France! Our ancestors, our grandfathers, our fathers have for centuries given their lives to push out successive invaders.”
– “I like Marine (Le Pen, the leader of the French far-right) a lot. I won’t hide it. She is the only woman … who has balls.”
– On #MeToo –
“Lots of actresses try to play the tease with producers to get a role. And then, so we will talk about them, they say they were harassed. I found it charming when men told me I was beautiful or I had a nice little backside.”
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© Agence France-Presse
