Brigitte Bardot’s Dating History: From Roger Vadim to Bernard d’Ormale

Brigitte Bardot was one of the most recognizable faces of the 1950s and 1960s before becoming a controversial figure in later years.

The French model, singer and actress first made headlines when she appeared on the cover of Elle at just 15 years old. She went on to become an international sex symbol and, later, a devoted animal activist after she retired from show business in 1973.

In 1996, Bardot published her highly criticized memoir Initiales B. B: Mémoires, in which she shared her support for far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. She’s also been charged several times for inciting racial hatred related to comments she made in articles and interviews, including a 2008 incident where she was fined $16,800 for making anti-Muslim statements in a letter to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

Over the course of her career, Bardot has had several high-profile relationships, including four marriages. Currently, she is married to businessman Bernard d’Ormale, whom she wed in 1992. The Contempt star is also a mom to one son, Nicholas, whom she welcomed with her second husband and has a strained relationship with.

Despite her on-screen success, Bardot is notoriously private when it comes to her personal life and her relationships. In fact, her first husband, director Roger Vadim, once said that she never cared much for the glitz and glamour of Hollywood.

“She did not get much affection from her parents, and when we started dating, she didn’t want jewels, but a dog,” Vadim said of Bardot and her passion for animals. “She was always allergic to fame, power and everything that connoted success. The innocence and honesty of animals reassured her.”

Here’s a look back at Brigitte Bardot’s dating history.

Roger Vadim

Bardot met French director Roger Vadim when she was 16, and he was 22. She and Vadim married on Dec. 21, 1952, three months after her 18th birthday.

Vadim directed Bardot in And God Created Woman, his directorial debut, in 1956. On the set, she began an affair with her costar Jean-Louis Trintignant, a fellow actor. Bardot and Vadim amicably divorced in April 1957

“I knew what was happening and rather expected it,” Vadim later said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. “I would always prefer to have that kind of wife, knowing she is unfaithful to me rather than possess a woman who just loved me and no one else … I wanted a woman with spirit, with joie de vivre … a woman with a sense of adventure and sexual curiosity.”

Vadim went on to marry Jane Fonda, with whom he welcomed daughter Vanessa Vadim.

Jean-Louis Trintignant

After meeting on the set of Bardot’s first movie, And God Created Woman, Bardot and French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant had an affair, mostly notable for ending her marriage to Vadim and Trintignant’s marriage to Stéphane Audran.

According to the biography Brigitte Bardot: The Life, the Legend, the Movies, author Ginette Vincendeau wrote that Bardot and Trintignant lived together for two years before breaking up.

Jacques Charrier

Bardot married actor Jacques Charrier in Louveciennes, France, on June 18, 1959, per the New York Times. Charrier was her costar in Babette Goes to War.

The pair became parents to son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier in January 1960, but Bardot wasn’t happy about becoming a mother.

“I looked at my flat, slender belly in the mirror like a dear friend upon whom I was about to close a coffin lid,” she wrote of her pregnancy in Initiales B. B: Mémoires. She added that she thought of her unborn son as a “cancerous tumor” that she tried to remove by punching herself in the stomach.

Bardot and Charrier divorced after three years of marriage, and he retained custody of Nicolas.

“I’m not made to be a mother,” Bardot wrote. “I’m not adult enough — I know it’s horrible to have to admit that, but I’m not adult enough to take care of a child.”

In 1997, Charrier and Nicolas sued Bardot and her publisher for her memoir’s “hurtful remarks” — including writing that she “preferred to give birth to a little dog” and that Charrier was a “vulgar, dictatorial and uncontrolled macho,” according to the Irish Times. Bardot was ordered to pay Charrier and Nicholas a total of $36,200, per The Independent.

Gunter Sachs

Per The Telegraph, Bardot met German millionaire Gunter Sachs in Saint Tropez in May 1966.

“I thought he was magnificent,” she recalled in her memoir. “I was hypnotised… he had the same Rolls as me!” Bardot wrote that the next day, Sachs had a helicopter fly over her home and shower it with thousands of roses.

Bardot and Sachs got married two months later in Las Vegas, though their newlywed bliss didn’t last for long. Bardot reportedly began an affair with singer Mike Sarne only days after they arrived home.

After multiple affairs, Bardot divorced Sachs in 1969. They remained on good terms, however, with Sachs later remarking, “A year with Bardot was worth 10 with anyone else.”

Serge Gainsbourg

While she was still married to Sachs, Bardot went on a date with French singer Serge Gainsbourg. According to The Guardian, she demanded that he write her a love song.

He wrote two, both of which have since become famous: “Bonnie et Clyde” and “Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus.” When Gainsbourg and Bardot recorded the latter, the two engaged in “heavy petting” in the sound booth, according to the sound engineer in the studio that day. Those sounds were captured on tape and were put into the song. However, Bardot asked to shelve the song after Sachs learned of its existence. Instead, Gainsbourg re-recorded the track with his new girlfriend, Jane Birkin, and the song became a huge hit, reaching number one in the U.K.

Bardot also later ended up releasing her own version of the recording in 1986 — after she and Sachs split.

Bernard d’Ormale

Bardot’s fourth marriage is proving to be her longest — but it also had the shortest courtship. Bardot and businessman Bernard d’Ormale met in July 1992 and married in August of that year.

According to d’Ormale, their relationship inspired Bardot to repair things with her estranged son. “Two weeks after we met,” d’Ormale told PEOPLE in 1992, “Brigitte phoned Nicolas because she wanted him to meet me, and we agreed to go and see him in Norway. Just before we left, she said, ‘Why don’t we get married while we are there?’ So we did. But quietly. I am not a man for the limelight. Only close friends of ours knew.”

D’Ormale is a former advisor to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former leader of the far-right party National Front. Bardot has become an outspoken supporter of the party, now known as National Rally, and publicly backed the group’s former leader Marine Le Pen, calling her “the Joan of Arc of the 21st century.”

In July 2023, emergency services were called to Bardot’s home in France after she suffered breathing difficulties. However, d’Ormale reportedly told local French newspaperVar Martin that his wife was feeling better, and attributed the high temperature as a cause of her condition.