The daughter of an industrialist, she studied ballet from early childhood. At 15 she posed for the cover of France's leading women's magazine, Elle, and her pouting child-woman image brought her to the attention of Roger Vadim, then assistant to director Marc Allégret. She and Vadim were married in 1952, divorced in 1957. In 1952 she made her film debut, in Jean Boyer's Le Trou Normand / Crazy for Love, and then played a variety of secondary roles, graduating to leads in 1955. In 1956 her appearance in Vadim's first film as director, Et Dieu créa la Femme / And God Created Woman, brought her international fame. The success of the film was astounding. Under her husband's guidance she emerged as a new type of sex symbol, a child of nature responding to the call of sensuality, a playful kitten to whom the supreme commandment is love. Box-office receipts the world over announced the birth of a new superstar; the greatest impact was in the US, where "BB" single-handedly brought French films out of the small art houses and into the major movie theatres. The new Bardot "sex kitten" image was maintained in most of her subsequent films. Clad in a breakaway towel, nude, or in abbreviated underwear or bathing suits, she kept packing audiences in from Afghanistan to Zanzibar. Her private life became the subject of world interest and church condemnation. Transitory romances, marriages, and divorces (Vadim, Jacques Charrier, millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs) made world headlines. Since 1960, with her appearance in Clouzot's La Vérité / The Truth, she has also been taken more seriously by critics as a capable actress. Still glamorous long after her retirement from the screen in the early 70s, Bardot remains a popular figure and the subject of frequent reports in French and foreign publications. In 1976 she established the Foundation for the Protection of Distressed Animals, a cause that has kept her visibly active ever since. Ini 1987 she raised $500,000 for the foundation by auctioning off her jewels. In 1985 she was awarded the French Legion of Honour. Among several books on her life and career is a famous treatise by Simone de Beauvoir, Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome (1960).