She is one of cinema’s most celebrated stars but, having made her last film decades ago, Brigitte Bardot cannot understand why anyone is still interested in her life, according to the maker of a new drama series about the French actor.
Bardot expressed her frustration in a letter to Oscar-nominated Monégasque film-maker Danièle Thompson, the writer-director of the new drama series Bardot.
Thompson said she approached Bardot about five years ago in developing the project: “She answered with a very long letter, saying that she was always surprised how unbelievably interested people were in her and did not quite understand why she was not left alone for good.”
Reading the first page, Thompson’s heart sank. She said: “Oh my God, she’s going to be very upset and she’s going to make problems. [It] was very much: ‘I want to be left alone, I don’t understand why the whole world is still talking about me, I’ve stopped working in movies years ago and I want to take care of my animal cause’ – which is something, of course, that is very important for her now. It was actually a very negative first page.”
But on the next page, Bardot wrote that “as long as I know that it’s going to be done anyway, I prefer that it’s you who does it”, Thompson said, paraphrasing the letter. She added: “I can’t say that she was excited about it. Certainly not.”
Thompson, 81, has written screenplays for acclaimed films including La Reine Margot, starring Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Auteuil, and Cousin Cousine, a romantic comedy for which she received an Oscar nomination in 1977.
Bardot, 88, was relieved that Thompson was behind the project, partly because she had been a friend of the film-maker’s parents, director Gérard Oury and the actor Jacqueline Roman. But she still did not want to get involved with the production.
Bardot rebelled against her strict upbringing and became a global sex symbol, helping ignite a worldwide sexual revolution with the 1956 release of And God Created Woman, her husband Roger Vadim’s first film.
Thompson said that Bardot has seen the new production: “I’ve heard from different people who know her that she definitely liked very much Julia [de Nunez], the girl who plays her part, and that she probably enjoyed some parts of it.”
She added: “Although the whole world knows ‘BB’, few know about the personal life of the young woman behind the myth.
“More than other great actresses of her generation, Bardot knew how to shatter the taboos and change the image of women in the society of her day.”