Details about Brigitte Bardot’s estranged relationship with her only child have resurfaced following the French icon’s death at 91.
Bardot is survived by her 65-year-old son, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier, who she had a strained relationship with due to her previous harsh remarks about never wanting to be a mother. However, in the last years of her life, the actor and singer appeared to change her approach to speaking publicly about the rift.
“I promised Nicolas I would never talk about him in my interviews,” she said in an interview with Paris Match, published in June 2024.
The model had Charrier with her second husband Jacques Charrier in 1960. After the former couple divorced in 1962, Charrier was raised by his father’s parents.
Charrier had previously attempted to persuade his mother to not speak about their relationship ahead of the release of her controversial 1996 memoir, Initiales B.B. His attempts to censor the tell-all book were unsuccessful as the book went on to make headlines at the time because Bardot referred to her son as the “object of my misfortune.”
“I’m not made to be a mother,” Bardot wrote in her memoir. “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.”
She wrote that she sought out an abortion, but was forced to carry the pregnancy to term because the procedure was illegal in France at the time. She wrote in the book: “I looked at my flat, slender belly in the mirror like a dear friend upon whom I was about to close a coffin lid.”
The animal rights activist also sparked backlash at a press conference at the time by saying she would have “preferred to give birth to a little dog” when asked about her son.
After the book was published, Charrier and Jacques sued Bardot over an invasion of privacy, ending with Bardot being ordered to pay around $40,000 in fines.
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Charrier opted to move away from the spotlight as he grew up. He settled down in Norway with his wife, Norwegian model Anne-Line Bjerkan, with whom he shares children and grandchildren.
Over time, Bardot and her son appeared to be on civil terms as they kept up limited contact. Bardot married her fourth and last husband, Bernard d’Ormale, near where Nicolas and his family lived in Norway in 1992. Bardot toldVar Matin in 2018 that she and her son visited each other yearly.
Bardot’s death Sunday came months after she was hospitalized for a serious illness.