Brigitte Bardot's complicated legacy: 1960s 'sex kitten' still lauded as a pin-up for hedonism on her 90th birthday - but she's overshadowed by a dark personal life and far-right views

She's a cinematic icon and an international sex symbol 70 years after she first took to the big screen - but as Brigitte Bardot turns 90, her legacy is a complicated one.

The French film star, whose career began to peak in the 1950s, was held up as a poster girl for hedonism and the sexual revolution of the Swinging Sixties with her seductive style and irresistible pout.

However, behind global fame and fawning fans, Bardot's personal life was deeply troubled. She has married four times, attempted to take her own life on at least two documented occasions, admitted to taking more than 100 lovers (both male and female) in her lifetime and has had a painfully strained relationship with her only son.

After giving up acting, modelling and singing in 1973, Bardot became better known for activism, campaigning vocally for animal rights and welfare and setting up her own charity to advance her cause.

However, the pin-ups forays into activism have evolved into engagement with far-right politics in France as she endorses The National Rally and its leader, Marine Le Pen , and has been fined six times and tens of thousands of euros for inciting racial hatred.

Bardot was born on September 28, 1934, to a wealthy family in Paris's affluent 16th arrondissement.

'Bri,' as Brigitte was called by her parents, was quickly enrolled in ballet classes by her Mama, Marie-Jeanne, 'Mijanou,' as well as modelling. She was considered the perfect height at the time, 5ft 6in.

Bri appeared on the cover of Elle magazine in May 1949 in her first modelling assignment, dressed in a younger version of what her mother's friends were wearing. Tailored jackets and full skirts were favoured at the time, as French fashion was dominated by designer Christian Dior. Hats, bags and high heels had to match.

By 1952, when she was 18 years old, her modelling style began to evolve into the 'sex kitten' image for which she'd soon be known; opting for flat ballet shoes, a thick-cut fringe, lipstick and clothes that accentuated her figure.

It was in her early modelling days that Bardot met the man who would become her first husband; Roger Vadim. Vadim was an assistant of the filmmaker Marc Allégret, who is credited with discovering the biggest stars in French cinema in the 1930s.

The pair met when Vadim went to see the then-16-year-old to scope her out for Allégret's next project and; although Bardot didn't get the role, she stole Vadim's heart from the first meeting.

Author Ginette Vincendeau has revealed Bardot once wrote of Vadim: 'He looked at me, scared me, attracted me, I didn't know where I was anymore.'

They became lovers meeting secretly and then openly against the wishes of her parents, who threatened to send their daughter away from Vadim to England. However, they eventually gave in and consented to the relationship when Bardot attempted suicide because she could not be with Vadim. Their condition was that the couple would wait until Bardot was 18 before they got married.

Eventually, the couple walked down the aisle in Paris on 21 December 1952 in a Catholic ceremony. It's considered one of the final times Bardot opted for a somewhat conservative outfit.

As Vadim introduced his wife to key figures in the film industry, Bardot began to take on small roles here and there, but was not taken seriously for her acting. Rather, she was recognised 'for her beauty and sexiness'.

However, her breakthrough role came in 1956 when she starred in Vadim's directorial debut And God Created Woman alongside Jean-Louis Trintignant. The film was hailed an international success; and while Bardot's acting career was finally taking off, she had fallen in love once again with her co-star.

Soon, she was divorced from Vadim (who had also been unfaithful) and head-over-heels for Trintignant. However, she continued to take a string of lovers throughout her life and was frequently unfaithful.

Following her split from Trintignant in 1958, she retreated to Italy, where it was reported at the time she had suffered a nervous breakdown. Reports also suggested she had made another suicide attempt, but this was denied by her team.

Weeks after the reports emerged, Bardot met and began a relationship with Jacques Charrier, a fellow French actor and producer. In 1959, she fell pregnant with their son, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier (born in January 1960) and married Jacques.

She did not want the pregnancy but Charrier's parents convinced her to carry the child. It was a difficult birth at home. She couldn't leave her house and get to the hospital in time with the number of paparazzi out front. She never bonded with her son and, in her 1997 memoir, revealed her attempts to abort him.

In a searingly painful account, Bardot's autobiography revealed how she repeatedly punched herself in the stomach and tried to convince doctors to prescribe her a lethal dose of morphine when back-room abortionists refused to operate on her.

The actress added she would have preferred to 'give birth to a little dog'.

Speaking about the day she learnt she was pregnant, Bardot wrote: 'I looked at my flat, slender belly in the mirror like a dear friend upon whom I was about to close a coffin lid.'

Another passage described her son's foetus as being like a 'cancerous tumour' growing inside her.

Following the publication of the memoir, Jacques and Nicolas-Jacques Charrier successfully sued Bardot for £28,000 over the hurtful remarks she had made about them.

On her 26th birthday in 1960, when her son was nine months old, Bardot tried to take her life again, downing a bottle of sleeping pills and slitting her wrists at her villa in Nice, France.

In 1962, after an affair with Glenn Ford, Bardot and Charrier divorced. Their son was raised in his father's family and had a distant relationship with his mother until he reached adulthood.

Later in life, Bardot reflected on her experience of motherhood, saying: 'I'm not made to be a mother. I'm not adult enough – I know it's horrible to have to admit that, but I'm not adult enough to take care of a child.

'I need someone to take care of me. I'm sad to have had that baby.'

In 1966, Bardot married German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs. The couple were together for three years before divorcing in 1969.

Bardot exited cinema in 1973 so that, 'as she put it, the cinema would not leave her. It was very Bardot to take the initiative and move on'.

During the next three decades, Bardot had a string of lovers including artist Miroslav Brozek and French TV producer Allain Bougrain-Dubourg.

Despite appearing hedonistic and sexually liberated, Bardot later reflected in her controversial memoir that many of her lovers exploited her as a naive young woman. She alleged some had beaten and abused her.

On September 27 1983, the eve of her 49th birthday, Bardot attempted suicide before being rushed to hospital. The following year, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She refused chemotherapy and instead agreed to radiotherapy. By 1986, she had recovered.

After leaving the film industry in 1973, Bardot turned her attention to activism. She dedicated much of her time to campaigning for animal welfare; but her exploits for the cause led her towards far-right politics as she began to take aim at the religion of Islam.

She turned her affection to animals and in 1986, established the Foundation Brigitte Bardot to take care of 'suffering animals'.

'I gave my youth and my beauty to men, I am now giving my wisdom and my experience, the best of myself, to animals!' Bardot wrote in 1987.

In 1992 she married Bernard d'Ormale, a former adviser to Jean-Marie Le Pen who is the former leader of the far-right Front national, currently led by Marine Le Pen. Bardot endorsed Le Pen in the 2012 and 201y French Presidential elections and has previously described her as the 'Joan of Arc of the 21st Century'.

In the 1990s she received two fines for comments she had made about 'animal-slaughtering Muslims'.

In 2004, Bardot wept in a courtroom as she was convicted of inciting racial hatred in a book she had written, titled A Cry in the Silence, which said she 'opposed the Islamisation of France'.

The court said: 'Madame Bardot presents Muslims as barbaric and cruel invaders, responsible for terrorist acts and eager to dominate the French to the extent of wanting to exterminate them.'

She claimed: 'I never knowingly wanted to hurt anybody. It is not in my character. If I did hurt someone, I'm sorry.' Bardot was fined €5,000.

Despite her apparent regret, Bardot has gone on to reoffend several times and has received a total of six fines for the offence.

Her most recent fine came in 2021, over an open letter published in 2019 in which she called residents of Reúnion Island, a French colony in the Pacific Islands, 'degenerate savages'. She was ordered by a French court to pay €20,000.

As Bardot turns 90, more than 50 years after she quit acting for good, her lasting affect on the fashion and film industries lives on as her image is still held up as the ultimate sex symbol.

Despite being lauded for her natural beauty and hourglass figure, Bardot has always refused to exercise and says she has never touched cosmetic surgery.

Brigitte Bardot: The Life, The Legend, released in 2014, revealed the pin-up suffered from arthritis and used a cane, but stubbornly refused hip surgery.

She said: 'I can no longer walk. I can no longer swim. But I'm lucky when I see how animals suffer. Suddenly, I discover that I have nothing to complain [about]'.

Last year, a filmmaker documenting the life of the French starlet revealed she had expressed frustration that people are still interested in her.

Speaking to the Guardian, Danièle Thompson, who wrote and directed the series Bardot, revealed the actress was unimpressed when she first contacted her to ask her permission to make the documentary.

Thompson said: '[Bardot] 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.'

Despite ultimately consenting to the project, Bardot refused to have any involvement in its production.