Posted on 09/28/2007 11:07:15 AM PDT by traumer
n her heyday she was an international sex symbol who starred in a series of hit films including The Girl in the Bikini.
Nowadays, however, Brigitte Bardot has an altogether more sombre public image.
The former actress and model, who turns 73 tomorrow, was wearing a dark business suit while in her home city of Paris to visit French president Nicolas Sarkozy today.
The star was happy to relinquish her status as sex bomb in 1974 and focus on issues closer to her heart Enlarge the image
Rather than strutting provocatively as she did during a hugely successful screen career, she was on crutches because of a nagging hip complaint.
Gone was the trademark pout and cascading blonde locks, to be replaced by sagging jowls covered in heavy make-up and a wiry, unkempt patch of greying hair.
Miss Bardot still lives close to St Tropez, the beach resort in the South of France where she first shot to fame in 1956 with And God Created Woman, and has often blamed excessive exposure to the sun for her poor skin.
Her torrid private life - including numerous failed marriages and affairs - have also been blamed for her frayed appearance as a pensioner.
"She certainly doesn't look like the Brigitte we all remember from the films," said another visitor to the Elysee Palace, where animal rights campaigner Miss Bardot discussed the plight of Canadian seals with Mr Sarkozy.
"One wouldn't say she's aged well," the source added.
Miss Bardot has also repeatedly shunned plastic surgery, making it clear that her days as an international beauty ended when she made her last film in 1974.
Today she said that all she was concerned about was animals threatened with cruelty around the world. "I've had my best birthday present when I turn 73, and that's the news that France is going to definitely refuse all imports of products derived from seals, as France refuses to be compliant in the annual massacre of seals in Canada," she said.
An embargo on such products was announced by the French government in April.
After becoming a star following "And God Created Women", made by her then husband Roger Vadim, Miss Bardot became known as a French cinematic sex kitten who could rival Marilyn Monroe.
She was also an acclaimed model and recorded pop songs with the singer Serge Gainsbourg.
After divorcing Vadim, Bardot was married three more times, as well as having numerous affairs.
In 1986, she set up the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals, launching legal challenges against governments and other institutions to acknowledge the rights of animals. She later ignited controversy with her marriage to a political activist from the far-Right Front National party.
Jebus, Mary and Joseph! I realize she’s in her 70s, but my mother is older than she is and doesn’t look that bad. jeez.
Yikes
Not aging well is an understatement
sw
Okay, who’s the one on the left?
A brave and B2FUL soul she is ~ traded style for substance.
Ah, Sofia! She is still hot! What is she? 65-70? As I understand it she never had any work done to her. Class, just sexy class.
She has been lifted and tucked. more than once.
Miss Deneuve has been lifted. Substantially lifted.
Bo is looking old? What are you, twelve? She is around 50, I think, and she looks fantastic—more beautiful than most women half her age. I don’t think she’s a ten “for her age”; she’s just a ten, period.
What are you? Nuts. Bo still looks great, one of my earlier posts says that. However she has aged. She isn’t the same Bo as in “10”. She would probably tell YOU that.
I have always thought her to be very beautiful.
What are you? OLD? Geez. Fetish, huh?
Men (and women) who dye their hair shoe-polish black (and possibly have a face lift at 65) are not at all handsome to this FReeper. It's disgusting.
You have got to be sheitting me.
That is really a picture of Brigitte’s mother.
Right?
Have you seen Catherine Deneuve recently? Horrible what she’s done to her face. Plasticized.
Bo Derek is a FReeper, in case you did not know!
I recently saw her in a French film and her mouth could barely move. I found it disturbing.
No I didn’t. I was being honest. Like I said, she is still beautiful, but an older beautiful.
Look at poor ole Brigitte. She has probably been subjected to socialized medicine.
Hey, she was once very beautiful, but she is 73 years old for Petes sake.
Not too many have been too kind to the 73 year old woman on this thread. LOL!
You're correct; however, I can still see the sparkle in her eyes. That remnant of our youth still shines through those wrinkles and crevasses.
Not a pretty sight.
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