Brigitte Bardot, the French actor and singer who became an international sex symbol before turning her back on the film industry and embracing the cause of animal rights activism and far-right politics, has died aged 91.Paying tribute to Bardot on Sunday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, wrote on social media that France was mourning “a legend of the century”.“Her films, her voice, her dazzling glory … her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom,” Macron said.Bardot’s death, at her Saint-Tropez home, La Madrague, on the French Riviera, was announced by her foundation. “The Brigitte Bardot Foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its founder and president, Madame Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned actress and singer, who chose to abandon her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare and her foundation,” it said.Her cause of death was not made public. Bardot was briefly hospitalised in October for what her office called a “minor” procedure.French icon Brigitte Bardot dies aged 91 – video reportThe town hall in Saint-Tropez, where Bardot had holidayed as a child and where she later shot the film And God Created Woman, said the actor had “helped make Saint-Tropez shine across the world”.The town said Bardot was its “most radiant ambassador” and part of “the collective memory of Saint-Tropez, which we must preserve”.Bardot shot to international fame in 1956 with And God Created Woman, written and directed by her then husband, Roger Vadim, and for the next two decades was said to have embodied the idea of the archetypal “sex kitten”. In the early 1970s, however, she announced her retirement from acting and became an outspoken campaigner on animal rights, and increasingly active politically on the far right.Bardot’s incendiary comments about ethnic minorities, immigration, Islam and homosexuality resulted in a string of convictions for inciting racial