--- title: Brigitte Bardot: Rare and Classic Photos of the Original 'Sex Kitten' description: LIFE celebrates the young Brigitte Bardot with a series of photographs — most of which never ran in LIFE magazine — made in Spain in 1958. canonical: https://time.com/3649602/life-with-brigitte-bardot-rare-and-classic-photos-of-the-original-sex-kitten/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-04-01T14:49:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:06:28.873Z og:title: Brigitte Bardot: Rare and Classic Photos of the Original 'Sex Kitten' og:description: LIFE celebrates the young Brigitte Bardot with a series of photographs — most of which never ran in LIFE magazine — made in Spain in 1958. og:url: https://time.com/3649602/life-with-brigitte-bardot-rare-and-classic-photos-of-the-original-sex-kitten/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb6294a75f8a39f16/6987778135ba6f3c42c063ad/141230-brigitte-bardot-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1340 og:image:height: 754 og:image:alt: Brigitte Bardot 1958 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Brigitte Bardot: Rare and Classic Photos of the Original 'Sex Kitten' twitter:description: LIFE celebrates the young Brigitte Bardot with a series of photographs — most of which never ran in LIFE magazine — made in Spain in 1958. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb6294a75f8a39f16/6987778135ba6f3c42c063ad/141230-brigitte-bardot-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # LIFE With Brigitte Bardot: Rare and Classic Photos of the Original 'Sex Kitten' > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Twice a week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Apr 1, 2013 2:49 PM UTC  Brigitte Bardot on set with actor Michel Roux, 1958. Brigitte Bardot on set with actor Michel Roux, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Apr 1, 2013 2:49 PM UTC Decades after her acting and singing careers came to an end, [Brigitte Bardot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigitte%5FBardot) is today primarily known for her animal-rights activism and for her frequent scrapes with the French authorities over her passionate, public denunciations of what she considers the “Islamification” of her native France. (She has been fined five times for “inciting racial hatred” in books and speeches, arguing in 2003, for example, that France has “given in to a subterranean, dangerous and uncontrolled infiltration which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own.”) All these years later, however, it’s still difficult for anyone who was not alive at the time to grasp the galvanizing effect that Bardot had—as an actress and as a sex symbol—on moviegoers around the world in the 1950s and early 1960s. Here, on her 80th birthday (she was born Sept. 28, 1934, in Paris), LIFE.com celebrates the young Bardot with a series of pictures—most of which never ran in LIFE—made by Loomis Dean in 1958. In a June 1958 article titled “The Charged Charms of Brigitte,” LIFE waxed lyrical (and, to contemporary ears, a touch patronizing, if not downright sexist) about the 24-year-old actress’ effect on American moviegoers and critics: --- > “” --- --- > “” --- --- > “” --- --- > “” --- And on it goes—an endless stream of metaphors (she’s a car, or a kitten, or perhaps some primeval erotic force merely visiting Earth in the guise of a twenty-something French beauty) that remind us of why, in part, Bardot left acting behind when she was not yet 40 years old. She had helped to create and to define the sex-goddess archetype in the movies, but found herself almost entirely unable to break out of that mold no matter how “serious” her roles became or how nuanced her performances actually were. In the end, then, if nothing else, the pictures in this gallery help explain why most critics and most audiences were, perhaps, unable to see beyond the sheer sensuality that Brigitte Bardot exuded, both onscreen and off. Ater all, for a while there in the middle part of the last century, she might just have been the sexiest woman on earth. Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at [@LizabethRonk](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk).  Brigitte Bardot on set with actor Michel Roux, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot on location in Spain in 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot photographed at the time she was making the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot photographed at the time she was making the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot on location for the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  French actress Brigitte Bardot photographed at the time she was making the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  French actress Brigitte Bardot photographed at the time she was making the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot photographed at the time she was making the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot photographed at the time she was making the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot plays the guitar while on the set of the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot (center) on the set of the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot on the set of the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot on the set of the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot checks her hair and makeup on the set of the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot (holding a copy of LIFE magazine) looks at a photographic slide on the set of the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot on the set of the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot photographed between takes on the set of the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot with co-star Antonio Vilar on the set of the film, La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Sooner or later in most of her films, Bardot is seen lounging on a bed ... Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Brigitte Bardot during break on location filming of La Femme et le Pantin, Spain, 1958. 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