SAINT-TROPEZ, France, Jan 7 (Reuters) – Brigitte Bardot, an icon of French cinema who died last month aged 91, will be buried on Wednesday by the sea in the French Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez.
Bardot’s funeral will take place at 1000 GMT at Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption church before she is buried in strict privacy in a cemetery in the glitzy town where she lived for much of her later life behind high walls, surrounded by a menagerie of cats, dogs and horses.
A tribute open to locals and fans will take place at the Pre des Pecheurs area in the old town quarter called La Ponche, the historic centre of the former fishing village.
Bardot shot to international fame in her early 20s in the film “And God Created Woman”, her tousled hair and fierce energy radiating a sexual magnetism that defined liberated femininity in 1950s France.
Known affectionately as B.B. by many in France, Bardot’s roles made her not just a sex symbol, but a pop culture icon and a touchstone for changing social attitudes. She became the first celebrity to model for a bust of Marianne, the traditional symbol of the French Republic that adorns French town halls.
However, Bardot found celebrity life isolating and a distraction from life’s simple pleasures. She made the last of her films in 1973 and left public life, devoting herself to animal welfare.
A tireless crusader for animal rights, Bardot’s political sympathies shifted to the far-right National Front. Incendiary remarks on immigration, Islam and homosexuality saw her convicted multiple times for inciting racial hatred.
She publicly endorsed the party’s successive leaders, Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine Le Pen, whom she once referred to as “the Joan of Arc of the 21st century”. Marine Le Pen is expected to attend the funeral.
Aurore Berge, Macron’s minister for equality and a defender of animal rights, has been invited and will represent the government.
Bardot told Le Monde in 2018 that she wished to be buried in a quiet corner of her garden. But the Var Prefecture said it never received any request for a private burial, which would have been needed to bury her in her garden.
(Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
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