Brigitte Bardot says she sacrificed a pampered life for one of committed activism and death threats, but has no regrets.
The glamorous actress-turned-activist claims she faced the threat of death while protesting against the killing of seals.
Bardot, 84, has said leaving the securities of a film star’s life was difficult, but she has no regrets about choosing the isolation and danger of activism.
The star was an aspiring ballerina before reaching an international audience as an actress in the late 1950s.
Decades later she auctioned off personal belongings and jewellery to begin an animal rights foundation, which she says has cost her both her luxury and safety.
Bardot says that she is proud of her leap into the unknown world of animal rights activism, and how she overcame sacrificing the loss of her lavish lifestyle and began one of lonely dedication.
She said: “Giving my money for the animals. I thought to myself, ‘Will I have enough to live on?’, ‘Will I achieve all I want to achieve for the animals’? It was very difficult for me.
“I had lost my mother and father so I couldn’t ask their advice. I was all alone. I didn’t have a husband, a lover, nobody to confide in, to ask advice but I managed all on my own and I am quite proud of it actually.”
She claims that in Canada, she felt the most dramatic and dangerous shift in her lifestyle.
Speaking on BBC Radio 2’s Carte Blanche, she said: “In Canada, first when I went there to fight for seals, I really thought I was going to die. I was threatened by the seal killers, by those torturers, those assholes, those big things who kill seals, who wanted to kill me.”
Her life is dominated by her work for the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, and has been transformed from the comfortable life she led as an actress.
But she said “I don’t regret anything”, although the first steps into the world of activism left her feeling isolated.
She said: “I was sure of my love for the animals, my passion, and that I wanted to give my life to them. But I wasn’t sure how I was going to go about it. I knew nothing. I had no experience.
“And there was I: without a purpose, without a film to make. Protection of my entourage: my make-up artist; my producer; my stylist; my hair-dresser – they never left my side, they were always around me. Now I was going to have to do without them. I was going to have to live all on my own.
“Before that I was spoiled, I was chauffeured.”
Carte Blanche airs on Tuesday January 1 from 9pm on BBC Radion 2. The exclusive interview was recorded exclusively in Bardot’s Saint-Tropez home, as she talks to presenter Vincent Niclo.
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