Since her retirement from the entertainment industry in the 1970s, Brigitte Bardot has devoted herself to improving conditions for animals around the world.
She was born in September 1934 in Paris. After becoming a ballet dancer and then a model she was spotted by film director Roger Vadim who was a major influence in both her further career and her private life.
She appeared in over fifty films and recorded songs such as 'Bonnie and Clyde' with Serge Gainsbourg before choosing, just before her fortieth birthday, to forsake the limelight.
As well as being a vegetarian herself, she is a major campaigner against the consumption of horse meat and established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals in 1986.