Bardot died Sunday at her home in southern France, according to rep from animal protection charity, who confirmed her death to the AP.

No cause or time of death was specified. She was reportedly hospitalized in November.

French president Emmanuel Macron was among the immediate mourners, calling her “a legend of the century.” He said on social media: “Her films, her voice, her dazzling glory, her initials, her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom. French existence, universal brilliance. She touched us. We mourn a legend of the century.

Bardot was one of the most famous French actresses of her time, celebrated for her beauty and fiery performances in such films as Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Truth (1960) and Godard‘s Contempt (1963).

With an 18-inch waist and long, tousled hair, Bardot was one of the first movie stars to appear au naturel.

She popularized the bikini in an era of one-piece modesty and made a habit of getting attention at the Cannes Film Fest.

On Playboy‘s list of the “100 Sexiest Stars of the Century,” published in 1999, she placed fourth, trailing only Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Raquel Welsch.

In my world, Bardot has lways been Numero Uno Sex Symbol.

At the time of its release in 1956, And God Created Woman, directed by Roger Vadim — the first of 4 husbands — pushed the boundaries of sex on the big screen.

It was banned by the Vatican, and French censors insisted on cuts before allowing it to be shown in theaters at home.

The film begins with Bardot, then 22, playing a restless orphan living in Saint-Tropez, lying unclothed on her stomach. Three men fall under her spell during the film, which also includes scenes of her undressing and a seuence of dancing barefoot and drunk to calypso music.

And God Created Woman was pilloried by French critics but gathered support in the U.S. and Great Britain, where it became a sensation.

Bardot became the face and body of cinema in her country, and Time magazine called her the “Countess of Come-Hither.”

Known by the acronym “B.B.” in her homeland, Bardot had her every movement tracked by paparazzi and her every liaison emblazoned on the covers of tabloids. When she tried to commit suicide in 1960 after her torrid affair with actor Sami Frey was discovered by her second husband, actor Jacques Charrier, scores of photographers flocked to the scene, blocking the road as an ambulance rushed a dying Bardot — who had slit her wrists — to a hospital in Nice.

“I can understand hunted animals because of the way I was treated,” Bardot once said. “What happened to me was inhuman.”

While shooting the 1973 sex comedy The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot, directed by Nina Companeez, she decided to give up acting. “Everything felt ridiculous, superfluous, absurd and useless,” she recalled in 1996 autobiography, Initiales B.B.

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born in Paris on Sept. 28, 1934. The daughter of an engineer, she was raised in a cultured bourgeois household in the affluent 16th arrondissement and studied ballet at the Conservatoire de Paris. She was scouted by a family friend to model for Elle magazine, whose cover she graced in 1950 at age 15.

Director Marc Allegret, who had discovered actress Simone Simon, recruited her for the movies, and she made her film debut in 1952’s Le trou normand (Crazy for Love), helmed by Jean Boyer. She also starred as a lighthouse keeper’s daughter in Willy Rozier’s Pacific-set romance The Girl in the Bikini and wed Allegret’s assistant, Vadim, that year.

Bardot appeared with Kirk Douglas in Act of Love (1953), in Concert of Intrigue (1954) and in Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy (1956) before her career breakthrough in And God Created Woman, Vadim’s directorial debut.

During the making of the film, Bardot began affair with co-star Trintignant, and she and Vadim divorced in 1957. (Vadim would marry Jane Fonda in 1965.)

Bardot’s turn as a woman on trial for murdering her lover (Frey) in The Truth — nominated for the Oscar for best foreign-language film in 1961 — remains one of her most memorable roles. The shoot with infamously difficult French auteur Clouzot, however, proved to be one of her most trying.

Bardot would deliver another prized showing as Camille Javal, a capricious bathing beauty, in Godard’s masterpiece Contempt, largely based on the filmmaker’s life and breakup with actress Karina.

Also starring Jack Palance and Fritz Lang, the behind-the-scenes drama about the making of a movie begins with Bardot lying nude on a bed as her husband (Piccoli) caresses and praises her body.

But Contempt is far from an exploitation film, and Bardot’s portrayal of a woman fleeing a tumultuous relationship with a screenwriter, only to land in the arms of an evil Hollywood producer, is the best in her career — this despite the fact she was neither Godard’s first nor second choice for the role.

Although Contempt did reasonably well in theaters, the fact that Bardot, 28, was one of the highest-paid actors in France meant the film did not turn a major profit. But now it is considered to be a New Wave classic and, arguably, Bardot’s best movie.

In Edward Dmytryk’s Western, Shalako (1968), she played a countess opposite Sean Connery, but the movie was a failure.

In 1965, she appeared in the 20th Century Fox comedy Dear Brigitte, starring Jimmy Stewart.

As a singer, Bardot’s most significant vocal work was for the French crooner Serge Gainsbourg, with whom she performed duets on “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Je t’aime … moi non plus.”

While the former became a major hit, the latter was shelved when Bardot’s third husband, German playboy Gunther Sachs, heard its sexually explosive lyrics on the radio and threatened to sue. (Bardot and Gainsbourg were allegedly having an affair). The song was rerecorded with Jane Birkin and released to much fanfare, while Bardot’s version did not come out until 1986.

Bardot’s fourth and final husband was French businessman and National Front adviser Bernard d’Ormale, whom she wed in 1992.

“I gave my beauty and my youth to men,” she said. “I am going to give my wisdom and experience, the best of me, to animals.”

Bardot supported National Front candidates including Catherine Megret and Marine Le Pen and spoke out against the “Islamisation” of France.

A 1996 interview in Le Figaro had her condemned for inciting racial hatred, while paragraph in her book comparing homosexuals and pedophiles was widely criticized.

Survivors include her son, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier, born in 1960 and raised predominantly by his father. ‘

Bardot never had any other children and described her pregnancy as “a tumor that was eating away at me, that I was carrying in my tumefied flesh, awaiting the sacred moment when they would finally get rid of it.”

Emancipated from family ties and sexual mores, whether those of the film industry she fled or the lovers she left behind.

I am the Man of My Life

Asked in 2014 by the French tabloid Gala why she had been so fiercely independent, she answered, “I’m the man of my life!”