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Is Brigitte Bardot OK? Emergency services called to iconic actress' home after her health scare, husband says 'happens at 88 years old'

Brigitte Bardot's husband said, 'Like all people of a certain age, she can no longer bear the heat'

SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE: First responders were called to Brigitte Bardot's Saint-Tropez home on Wednesday, July 18, after the iconic French actress suffered some breathing difficulties. Her husband Bernard d’Ormale later confirmed the news and detailed what happened shortly after the incident. 

Bernard told local newspaper Var Martin that his wife’s breathing was back under control and she was in a better state. He suggested that the upsurge in temperatures in Saint-Tropez as Southern Europe suffers a prolonged heatwave had been a contributing factor. 

Is Brigitte Bardot OK?

“It was around 9 am when Brigitte had trouble breathing,” Bernard told the outlet, adding that ambulances in the south of France initially “got the wrong” address. “[Her breathing] was stronger than usual but she did not lose consciousness. Let’s call it a moment of respiratory distraction.” Her husband said that once the emergency services arrived, they put the 88-year-old iconic sex symbol on oxygen “and stayed to watch her” for a while. “Like all people of a certain age, she can no longer bear the heat,” he explained. “It happens at 88 years old. She must not make useless efforts.”

Who is Brigitte Bardot?

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a well-known French animal rights activist and former actress. Bardot was one of the best-known sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s but left the spotlight in 1973 shortly before her 40th birthday. Her best-known credits include the 1956 Saint Tropez-set breakout 'Et Dieu… Crea La Femme' ('And God… Created Woman') by Roger Vadim, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s murder trial drama 'La Verite' and Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 'Contempt.'

The French celebrity devoted herself to animal rights causes in the following years. Most recently, Bardot was fined for making racist comments when she described the inhabitants of the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion as “degenerate savages.” “The natives have kept their savage genes,” she wrote in a 2019 open letter to the prefect of Réunion, claiming the islanders were abusing animals.

Why did Bardot step away from the spotlight?

“There was some exhaustion there, not just from the pace of work, but just [being] the endless subject of a camera lens, whether it’s a still camera lens or a movie lens,” James Clarke, a UK-based author and film historian who penned the 2023 book “Being Bardot,” told Fox News in June. “She got to that point where it’s just like, ‘I’ve kind of done it and 20 years has been sufficient.'”

Bardot auctioned off about one-fifth of her personal property in 1987 which included precious jewelry, art and clothes and raised $500,000. “I gave my beauty and my youth to men,” Bardot said at the time. “And now I am giving my wisdom and experience, the best of me, to animals.”

Bardot recently paid tribute to the late singer Jane Birkin

Bardot paid tribute to actress and singer Jane Birkin this week following her death at the age of 76. “I am really sad. Jane is gone. When one is so pretty, so fresh, so spontaneous, with the voice of a child, one doesn’t have the right to die. She will remain forever in our hearts,” she said in a handwritten post on Twitter.