French film star Brigitte Bardot has been hospitalized for “a serious illness” since the end of last month.
The 91-year-old former sex symbol and animal rights activist is expected to be released in the coming days after three weeks in a private hospital in Toulon, about 65 kilometers southwest of her home in Saint-Tropez, according to local media Var-Matin.
Despite her planned release, “the state of health of the BAFTA candidate remains worrying” after she underwent “surgery in the context of a serious illness”.
Bernard d’Ormale, to whom Bardot has been married since 1992, told the outlet in the summer of 2023 that she had been briefly under observation after firefighters treated her at their home on the French Riviera due to breathing difficulties.
Her breathing “was more difficult than usual but she did not lose consciousness,” d’Ormale said at the time.
“Like all people of a certain age, she can no longer stand the heat,” he explained about the woman who was then 88 years old.
The hospitalization of the “…And God Created Woman” actress follows her birthday on September 28 and the release of her ABC book, “Mon BBcédaire”.
According to a translated description, the book “reveals an intimate and personal collection of definitions, written entirely by hand” and is “a testimony to his extraordinary character and personality.”
Bardot’s legacy – following his retirement from cinema following “The Uplifting and Joyful Story of Colinot” in 1973 – has been a thorny one. In 2020, she defended famous French director Roman Polanski, who was wanted in the United States after pleading guilty in 1977 to rape.
More than a decade earlier, in 2008, Bardot herself had been caught in the crosshairs of the law when she was found guilty of inciting discrimination and racial hatred against Muslims, for which she was fined more than $23,000 and ordered to pay $1,555 in damages to a French NGO aimed at combating racism.
