Brigitte Bardot and Florian Philippot, then vice president of the Front National (FN, France's far-right party), at the actress's home in Saint-Tropez, July 18, 2015. CAPTURE D’ECRAN X @@F_PHILIPPOT
Brigitte Bardot, the actress, was known for Le Mépris (Contempt); Bardot, the political figure, embodied racial hatred. Convicted five times for inciting racial hatred, Bardot remained, for three decades, an exception in French culture – the only celebrity to openly defend the far right. In the 1990s, after withdrawing from film sets, the star adopted those views and married Bernard d'Ormale, adviser to Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right Front National (FN), the precursor to today’s Rassemblement National. He remained her husband until the end of her life.
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Brigitte Bardot has died aged 91
In her hostility toward immigration and her nostalgia for a France she believed lost, she shared common ground with Alain Delon, another icon of the golden age of French cinema. But unlike Delon, Bardot multiplied Islamophobic remarks. Once an embodiment of women's freedom, her rejection of social conventions drove her, after her acting career, to push the boundaries of what could be said, wavering between a taste for provocation and outright racism.
