Oscars 2026: Brigitte Bardot snubbed for ‘In Memoriam’ section
Despite the extended ‘In Memoriam’ section at this year’s Oscars, Brigitte Bardot was snubbed in the line-up of tributes.
During an extended segment which included prolonged individual tributes to Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, and Robert Redford on top of the usual montage, the formerly iconic French actor didn’t receive a mention after her passing at the age of 91 in December last year.
Although she was a stalwart of French cinema at the height of her fame, Bardot became a controversial figure in the years that followed due to a series of comments she made that were variously Islamophobic and homophobic.
As such, when she died, tributes on social media were largely sparse, and also linked to the snub of a tribute at this year’s Oscars.
Among various controversies in the relative later stages of her career, Bardot was taken to court five separate times between 1997 and 2008 on charges of inciting racial hatred due to Islamophobic comments.
She also made highly homophobic comments in her memoir A Cry in the Silence in 2003, attacking unemployed people in the same book.
Bardot had one child, Nicholas-Jacques, whom she was forced to pay damages to after she once claimed she would have “preferred to give birth to a little dog”.
From a political perspective, Bardot was a prominent supporter of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, further polarising and muddying her legacy by saying the leader was “the Joan of Arc of the 21st century”.
One of the few tributes paid to Bardot at the time of her passing came from Le Pen, who called her “incredibly French. Free, indomitable, whole. She will be hugely missed.”
To this end, Bardot also denounced the cause of feminism in one of her final interviews, having previously blasted the MeToo movement at the time of its height.
Among the various claims she made in her notorious memoir, Bardot, who attended private school in her youth, said state-run schools were “dens of depravations filled with drug dealers, young terrorist clubs and condom users”. Bardot also wrote that teachers “come to work unshaven, their hair a mess, their shirts dirty, wearing filthy jeans and muddy trainers”.
Cumulatively, this has had a significant effect on tarnishing what was once Bardot’s seismic legacy as one of French cinema’s absolute greats, with Far Out‘s Rachael Pimblett calling it an “uncomfortable truth”.
When the actor died on December 28th, singer Chappell Roan paid tribute to her by posting on Instagram: “Rest in peace Ms. Bardot. She was my inspiration for ‘Red Wine Supernova’,” referencing the lyric in the aforementioned song that says, “She was a playboy, Brigitte Bardot, She showed me things I didn’t know”.
However, Roan then retracted her statement a day later after learning of Bardot’s political stance, as she said: “Holy shit I did not know all that insane shit Ms. Bardot stood for. I do not condone this. Very disappointing to learn.”
The most prominent tributes in the segment were devoted to Reiner, Keaton, and Redford, with Billy Crystal, Rachel McAdams, and Barbra Streisand leading the portions of the tributes for each of those.
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