Following her death on Sunday, December 28, at the age of 91, Brigitte Bardot leaves behind her only son, Nicolas. Having never wished to become a mother, the actress learned to navigate life with her son. A complex parent-child relationship, which eventually calmed with time.
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child left for orphan. Just a few months after the death of Jacques Charrier, who passed away on September 3 at the age of 88, Nicolas Charrier also lost his mother, Brigitte Bardot. Initially strained and complex, their relationship gradually improved, thanks in particular to the intervention of Bernard d’Ormale. The latter, who has been Brigitte Bardot’s husband since 1992, worked tirelessly to bring mother and son closer. “I suggested to Brigitte that she visit her son, and that was that, it went well,” he told Paris Match last September. “They don’t see each other much, but he’s often come to La Madrague. And they talk on the phone regularly. Just the day before yesterday!” he adds. It was far from a sure thing at the start…
In the late 1950s, Brigitte Bardot, who had already undergone several abortions, still had no plans to become a mother, least of all with her then-partner, Jacques Charrier. “She could be happy. Quite the opposite. Love is untamed savagery. She doesn’t want this child. Not ready. No desire. Not with this man, Charrier, who is becoming increasingly possessive, whom she knows to be fragile, sometimes violent,” recounts Pascal Louvrier in his book, Vérité BB (Éd. Le Passeur). But fate had other plans for her.
Brigitte Bardot and her complex relationship with motherhood: “I would have preferred…”
Once pregnant, Brigitte Bardot had no choice but to marry, to conform. At least, that’s what her father, Louis, thought. Faced with her reluctance on her wedding day, he reminded her of her obligations: “You’re pregnant, don’t forget it. You must marry the father.” And so she did on June 18, 1959, at a small ceremony held in Louveciennes (Yvelines), the Bardot family’s ancestral home. While the pressure surrounding marriage was trying, her pregnancy was even more so. In her book, Initiales BB, published in 1996, the star spoke candidly about it: “It was like a tumor that had fed on me, that I had carried in my swollen flesh, waiting only for the blessed moment when I would finally be rid of it. The nightmare reached its peak; I had to bear the source of my misfortune for the rest of my life.”
On January 11, 1960, the actress gave birth to a boy, named Nicolas. She was 25 years old and didn’t feel ready to face motherhood. “When they placed the child on her stomach, she was so exhausted that she pushed it away,” recounts Marie-Dominique Lelièvre in Brigitte Bardot, plein la vue (Flammarion). Later, she would speak very harshly about this event, stating: “I would have preferred to give birth to a puppy.” In an interview with journalist Caroline Pigozzi of Paris Match, reported in the book Pourquoi eux (Plon), Brigitte Bardot suggests that “it certainly wasn’t the right time to have a child.” She explains: “I was suicidal every three minutes, doing nothing but stupid things, but you don’t get to choose; the timing was bad and everyone suffered.”