Brigitte Bardot Still As Surly As Ever

The ever-cranky, animal-loving, Le Pen-supporting, Palin-hating original sex kitten Brigitte Bardot has emerged from her seclusion to denounce the idea of Jaime King playing her in a biopic helmed by King’s husband, Kyle Newman. Thing is, we see her point.

First of all, would they stop trying to portray icons, already? At best it’s good impersonation (Cate Blanchett as Hepburn); at worst it’s farce (Jennifer Love Hewitt as Hepburn.) Anyone who’s achieved that level of cultural resonance has usually done so because of something undefinable, and whether it’s Edie, Jackie or Marilyn, how many times do we have to see that it’s an exercise in futility? True, Laetitia Casta played Bardot in Serge Gainsbourg, Vie Heroique, and while the resemblance was limited, she had the smolder down — and as such, earned the thorny Bardot’s approval in the role.

For someone who aligns herself with wing-nut politicians, Bardot is protective of her image and demands a certain level of deference. When she heard about the proposed Newman film (since shelved), she exploded on French radio, “A film about my life? But I am not dead,” and said ominously that “sparks will fly.” As she told The Daily Beast’s Eric Pape, “I am astonished and surprised that someone could consider making a film about me without talking to me about it…First of all, I have to agree to cede the television and film rights to my memoirs, Initiales B.B., and I must have my word to say on the choice of directors and the actress. That’s the minimum.”

In addition to King, Bardot has voted thumbs-down on the fur-sporting Madonna. Who, let’s face it, would have been completely ridiculous. The better question is, why do all these actresses want to play Bardot? Sure, the young bombshell and her romantic entanglements is a good vanity-part, but what about the contemporary woman, in all her complexity and facets? What about her controversial political leanings and anti-immigration stances? While profile after profile (including the Daily Beast) seems determined to ignore this, limiting her “eccentricities” to her overweening love of animals, and paint her as a 2D fashion icon, what the magazine Boho termed “a beautiful person inside and out,” the irony is that the real Bardot refuses to be so pigeonholed. In a literal sense, she refuses rights to unrealistic portrayals. In a larger one, she refuses to go gently into romanticized iconoclasm.