A star

I don't recall ever having seen any movies with Brigitte Bardot, though somehow she has always been on the radar. I gather from Althouse's post that the New York Times didn't like her much ("crazy cat lady"?). She had a great deal of happy sex appeal, but from the summary of her personal life I gather that some of that was based on illusion.

She quit the movie business and devoted her life to animal welfare, which was probably far more satisfying. (We would not have seen eye to eye, I'm afraid.) She had the wealth and fame to be able to get up the Enarques' noses about immigration and get away with only fines she could easily pay. I'd bet that increased her popularity.

I read a few years ago in National Geographic (so take it for what it is worth) that an Inuit boy's great accomplishment would be to kill a polar bear by himself, but that some of those who succeeded committed suicide not long after--perhaps there were no obvious challenges left in life. If your great accomplishment was to be a sex-kitten for a few years, the rest of life would seem pretty empty -- unless you found a new career that didn't demand youth and classic beauty. But when, whenever you put out a press release, the media kept using your old sex-kitten pictures, would it feel like they were trying to push you out of your new career and into your lost old one?

Yes, there were some pictures of her from later in life. The ones that weren't might get to be exasperating.