Moaning luvvies have a lot to learn from Brigitte Bardot

I missed Brigitte Bardot mania; by the time she retired from film-making at the age of 40 to concentrate on animal rights activism, I was only 13. But awhile back I saw a film of BB’s – La Verite, made in 1960, a courtroom drama which was her biggest ever commercial success in France and nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar – and was amazed at how good she was.

I joined a few Facebook fan pages. Unsurprisingly she is stunningly beautiful in all of them. But something stands out which differentiates her greatly from the alleged film stars of today. She pouts petulantly in studio shots, as befitted her image as a malicious minx who would un-man a fellow as soon as fleece him. But paradoxically, in the vast majority of off-duty or paparazzi publicity shots she seems at least serene – at best positively gleeful.

There’s one photograph in particular – from 1959, credited to Keystone Pictures, in which a mob of press photographers hustle to get close to Bardot as she is pressed up against a mirror.