God created the perfect screen icon

SHE WAS the original "sex kitten" but French actress, singer and global sex symbol Brigitte Bardot turned her back on all that glitz and glamour to become a fervent animal rights activist.

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Born to a wealthy family in Paris, as a child she wanted to become a ballerina. Discovered in her teens after posing on the cover of Elle magazine, she started an acting career aged 18 in 1952, much against her strict Catholic parents' wishes.

However Bardot's grandfather was supportive, saying, "If this little girl is to become a whore, cinema will not be the cause".

Four short years later she shot to worldwide fame in the 1956 film And God Created Woman, written and directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim, in which she played a sexually liberated woman.