Bardot: An Intimate Portrait

This bio should carry a warning sticker: ``For Brigitte Bardot Worshipers Only.'' Robinson (The End of the American Century) qualifies. He sums up his subject thus: ``She was better than perfect. She was unique.'' This moody and often intractable former star is chronicled here in careful detail. Robinson can hardly stress enough how world-famous his subject is or how miserable this fame made her. He portrays her as a persecuted, misunderstood wild child who simply wanted to be left alone. ``She didn't just suffer from being a star, it was beyond that. It was infernal. She was hunted like an animal,'' Robinson quotes a friend of Bardot as saying. She moved without misgiving from man to man, including director Roger Vadim, actor Jacques Charrier and millionaire Gunther Sachs and finally in August 1992 married Bernard d'Ormale, a sometime supporter of right-wing French nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen. One loses track of both the endlessly changing cast of men and the continual incidents of harassment by fans. It is hard now to think of the overtly sexual, pouting star of And God Created Woman as being a reclusive 61-year-old surrounded by her animal fans. She is probably now the world's most famous animal rights activist. (June)