Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot



Early life

Brigitte Bardot (full name Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot) was born in Paris to Anne-Marie 'Toty' Mucel (1912-1978) and Louis 'Pilou' Bardot (1896-1975). Her father had an engineering degree and worked with her grandfather in the family business. Toty was sixteen years younger and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother enrolled her and her younger sister Marie-Jeanne ('Mijanou', born May 5, 1938) in dance. Mijanou eventually gave up on dancing lessons to complete her education, whereas Brigitte decided to concentrate on a ballet career. In 1947, Bardot was accepted to The National Superior Conservatory of Paris for Music and Dance and for three years attended the ballet classes of Russian choreographer Boris Knyazev. (One of her classmates was Leslie Caron). By the invitation of her mother's acquaintance, she modeled in a fashion show in 1949. In the same year she modeled for a fashion magazine "Jardin des Modes" managed by another friend of her mother, journalist Hélène Lazareff. She appeared on a March 8, 1950 cover of ELLE. [5] and was noticed by a young film director Roger Vadim. He showed an issue of the magazine to director and screenwriter Marc Allégret, who offered Bardot the opportunity to audition for "Les lauriers sont coupés" thereafter. Although Bardot got the role, the shooting of the film was canceled, but it made her consider becoming an actress. Moreover, her acquaintance with Vadim, who attended the audition, influenced her further life and career.[6][7]

[edit] Career

Although the European film industry was then in its ascendancy, Bardot was one of the few European actresses to receive mass media attention in the United States. She and Marilyn Monroe were perhaps the foremost examples of female sexuality in films of the 1950s and 1960s, and whenever she made public appearances in the United States the media hordes covered her every move.

Brigitte Bardot debuted in a 1952 comedy film Le Trou Normand (English title: Crazy for Love). In the same year she married Roger Vadim. From 1952 to 1956 she appeared in seventeen films; in 1953 playing a part in Jean Anouilh's stageplay "L'Invitation au château" ("The Invitation to a Castle"). She received media attention when she attended the Cannes Film Festival in April 1953. [7] "She is every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris," wrote the film-critic Ivon Addams in 1955.

Her films of the early and mid 1950s were generally lightweight romantic dramas, some of them historical, in which she was cast as ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. She played bit parts in three English-language films, the British comedy Doctor at Sea (1955), Helen of Troy (1954), in which she was understudy for the title role but only appears as Helen's handmaid, and Act of Love (1954) with Kirk Douglas. Her French-language films were dubbed for international release.