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wasnât aware of it at the time.
My career in film was busy and exotic, but it was never very fulfilling. Of course, I have lots of memories of those times, but, honestly, theyâre more of a nuisance than anything else! I was often depressed by that way of life. Sometimes I couldnât really overcome my sadness during these cinema days. I couldnât imagine myself in such a world forever, and on occasion I wanted to simply stop living. I even attempted suicide, but, fortunately, I didnât succeed. I stayed in the business because I told myself, and my mother told me, that I needed money. I didnât have a dime, I was just a kid. I thought that I needed money to be able someday to protect animals. I had an affinity for all of them, little birds kept in cages so that they cannot stretch their wings and fly, rabbits who are killed to be eaten. This thought of how to help them began to consume my life.
When I was eighteen, I married the great French director, Roger Vadim, and we started making movies together. It was Vadim who told me about vivisection, animal experiments. That absolutely chilled and haunted me. He told me of how animals suffer in laboratories, in their cages. I found it shocking that humans could be so horribly cruel. This passion for animals carried over into movies. I loved the little animals in my films so much that I couldnât let them go and would keep them. I had a very small apartment in Paris, and one day I rescued a performing monkey from a production and took him home. He broke everything in the place, he ate all my makeup, and he soiled everywhere. I was very young then, about nineteen years old, and I became upset, even angry, but I felt sorry for him, too. I knew that he couldnât help it. I finally took him to a sanctuary for exotic animals where he was very happy.
All my life Iâve been touched by particular cases that I didnât understand fully but that I could feel so deeply. Stories about slaughterhouses shocked me even when I was small, but, as horrible as it made me feel, I didnât know what to do about it. Then, in 1986, I sold everything that had a monetary value to start my foundation for animals. People ask if that was a difficult thing to do. No, not at all! Well, it was a little hard to find myself selling the very first diamond that I bought myself!
It was difficult because my mother had told me to buy it and I remember the moment well. I must have been twenty-three or twenty-four years old. She warned me that it was best not to keep money but buy precious stones instead. She said if there is a war, if there are social problems, at least with a diamond, you can hide it on yourself, in your panties, and you can always survive with a precious stone!
So, we went to Mellerioâsâa large French jewelry store, the equivalent of Cartier. I donât know if itâs still there, in the fabulous Place Vendome in Paris. I paid for this diamond with my very first large fees from my films.When I sold it to support the work of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for Animals, I felt quite sentimental. I never wore that ring, it wasnât for wearing, but it was symbolic! But there it was on the auction block, and I knew I was getting much better use out of it than having it sit in a vault in a bank.
When I see people eating animals, I always say âAnimals are my friends, and I donât eat my friends.â But I never forbid anyone to eat meat. I just wish that they would eat less if theyâre not going to be vegetarians. When I was a kid, we ate meat once a week. We ate fish, eggs, and pasta, and we didnât put meat on the pasta. We had meat only on Sundays, once a week. No one needs to eat meat morning, noon, and night. Itâs very bad for your health and itâs really a horror for the animals, a dreadful industrial death, with conditions getting worse.
I quit the cinema thirty-three years ago, and since then I have had no
My career in film was busy and exotic, but it was never very fulfilling. Of course, I have lots of memories of those times, but, honestly, theyâre more of a nuisance than anything else! I was often depressed by that way of life. Sometimes I couldnât really overcome my sadness during these cinema days. I couldnât imagine myself in such a world forever, and on occasion I wanted to simply stop living. I even attempted suicide, but, fortunately, I didnât succeed. I stayed in the business because I told myself, and my mother told me, that I needed money. I didnât have a dime, I was just a kid. I thought that I needed money to be able someday to protect animals. I had an affinity for all of them, little birds kept in cages so that they cannot stretch their wings and fly, rabbits who are killed to be eaten. This thought of how to help them began to consume my life.
When I was eighteen, I married the great French director, Roger Vadim, and we started making movies together. It was Vadim who told me about vivisection, animal experiments. That absolutely chilled and haunted me. He told me of how animals suffer in laboratories, in their cages. I found it shocking that humans could be so horribly cruel. This passion for animals carried over into movies. I loved the little animals in my films so much that I couldnât let them go and would keep them. I had a very small apartment in Paris, and one day I rescued a performing monkey from a production and took him home. He broke everything in the place, he ate all my makeup, and he soiled everywhere. I was very young then, about nineteen years old, and I became upset, even angry, but I felt sorry for him, too. I knew that he couldnât help it. I finally took him to a sanctuary for exotic animals where he was very happy.
All my life Iâve been touched by particular cases that I didnât understand fully but that I could feel so deeply. Stories about slaughterhouses shocked me even when I was small, but, as horrible as it made me feel, I didnât know what to do about it. Then, in 1986, I sold everything that had a monetary value to start my foundation for animals. People ask if that was a difficult thing to do. No, not at all! Well, it was a little hard to find myself selling the very first diamond that I bought myself!
It was difficult because my mother had told me to buy it and I remember the moment well. I must have been twenty-three or twenty-four years old. She warned me that it was best not to keep money but buy precious stones instead. She said if there is a war, if there are social problems, at least with a diamond, you can hide it on yourself, in your panties, and you can always survive with a precious stone!
So, we went to Mellerioâsâa large French jewelry store, the equivalent of Cartier. I donât know if itâs still there, in the fabulous Place Vendome in Paris. I paid for this diamond with my very first large fees from my films.When I sold it to support the work of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for Animals, I felt quite sentimental. I never wore that ring, it wasnât for wearing, but it was symbolic! But there it was on the auction block, and I knew I was getting much better use out of it than having it sit in a vault in a bank.
When I see people eating animals, I always say âAnimals are my friends, and I donât eat my friends.â But I never forbid anyone to eat meat. I just wish that they would eat less if theyâre not going to be vegetarians. When I was a kid, we ate meat once a week. We ate fish, eggs, and pasta, and we didnât put meat on the pasta. We had meat only on Sundays, once a week. No one needs to eat meat morning, noon, and night. Itâs very bad for your health and itâs really a horror for the animals, a dreadful industrial death, with conditions getting worse.
I quit the cinema thirty-three years ago, and since then I have had no
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