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Elizabeth Day – The Observer, Sunday 6 September 2009
The French sex symbol announced her retirement just before she turned 40 and devoted her life to animal welfare; the sultry Italian star posed for a Pirelli calendar only three years ago and is still making movies. Elizabeth Day says they both deserve respect
Loren posting for the Pirelli calendar and Bardot on the way to meet Sarkozy
When Sophia Loren turned 72 three years ago, she celebrated by posing semi-naked for a Pirelli calendar alongside a handful of women less than half her age. Wearing a silk negligée, she draped herself languorously under a bed sheet with her head tilted sensually upwards in a suggestion of ecstatic abandon. A Vatican aide was moved to comment that, if the Pope ever changed his stance on human cloning, it would be because of Loren.
In the same year, Brigitte Bardot was photographed on her way to a meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy, then French interior minister, to discuss cruelty against Canadian seals. Bardot was dressed in black and limping on crutches because of a nagging hip complaint. According to one mid-market tabloid, her appearance was marked by "sagging jowls covered in heavy make-up and a wiry, unkempt patch of greying hair".
The comparison might seem ungracious, but Bardot has the misfortune of being almost exactly the same age as her fellow actress: this month they will both turn 75 within days of each other. These two cinematic legends of the 1960s have chosen to age in very different ways, provoking very different public reactions. Their forthcoming birthdays prompt the inevitable question: how should an icon best grow old?
My thoughts on Loren young or old is well known on this blog 😉 and so are my thoughts on the young Bardot. And Bardot has my respect for her work for animal rights, but she has also grown into a hard headed fascist and that deserves no one’s respect – Ted
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