French icon Brigitte Bardot’s funeral took place in Saint-Tropez, with her husband revealing she died from cancer after two operations.
SAINT-TROPEZ: Brigitte Bardot was laid to rest in her hometown on Wednesday as her husband revealed the French screen icon died from cancer.
Bernard d’Ormale told Paris Match his wife had dealt “very well” with two operations before the unspecified disease “took her”. The reclusive star died aged 91 at her home on December 28.
Hundreds of well-wishers gathered for the funeral despite brisk winter temperatures. A church service at Notre-Dame de l’Assomption was shown on public screens in Saint-Tropez.
The ceremony was described as a “no frills” event reflecting Bardot’s wishes. “It will be simple, just as Brigitte wanted,” said Bruno Jacquelin, spokesman for the Brigitte Bardot Foundation.
Animals and their protection were a key theme at the commemorations. Bardot devoted most of her life to animal rights activism.
“She remained conscious and concerned about the fate of animals until the very end,” d’Ormale added. The former far-right political adviser said Bardot insisted on returning home to her villa “la Madrague” despite discomfort after hospitalisations in late 2025.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen attended the service, underlining Bardot’s hard-line anti-immigration views. Centrist President Emmanuel Macron did not attend.
Bardot was a divisive figure who alienated many fans with her political views later in life. She was convicted five times for hate speech, particularly about Muslims.
“To be moved by the fate of dolphins but remain indifferent to the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean — what level of cynicism is that?” commented Greens lawmaker Sandrine Rousseau.
Most observers agreed she was a cinema legend who embodied the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Macron’s office offered to organise a national homage but was snubbed by Bardot’s family.
She is survived by her fourth husband, d’Ormale, a former adviser to Le Pen’s late father Jean-Marie. No information was given about whether her only child, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier, attended.
Bardot lived most of her life estranged from her son, though they drew closer in her final years. In her memoirs, she compared pregnancy to carrying a “tumour that fed on me”.
Her sister Mijanou, 87, did not travel from Los Angeles for the funeral. “My Brigitte… now knows the greatest of mysteries,” she wrote on Facebook.
Bardot was buried at her family’s Mediterranean seaside grave. In 2018, she had said she wished to be buried in her garden with her pets to avoid a “crowd of idiots” at the cemetery.
