Brigitte Bardot

Paris — Brigitte Bardot’s funeral was held Wednesday with a private service and public tribute in Saint-Tropez, the French Riviera resort where she lived for more than half a century after retiring from film stardom at the height of her fame.

The animal rights activist and supporter of the far right. He died on December 28 at the age of 91. at his home in the south of France.

President Emmanuel Macron said after his death that France was “mourning a legend.”

She died of cancer after undergoing two operations, her husband, Bernard d’Ormale, said in an interview with Paris Match magazine published Tuesday afternoon. “She was aware and concerned about the fate of the animals until the end,” he said.

Residents and admirers applauded the funeral convoy as the coffin of Bardot, once one of the most photographed women in the world and a defining siren of the 1960s, was carried through the city’s narrow streets.

To the sound of Maria Callas’ “Ave Maria” a religious service began at the Catholic church Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption in the presence of Bardot’s husband, son and grandchildren, as well as guests from the family and the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals.

Hundreds of people gathered in the small town to follow the farewell on large screens installed in the port and in two squares.

After the religious service, Bardot will be buried “in the strictest privacy” in a cemetery overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, according to the Saint-Tropez town hall.

She had long called Saint-Tropez her refuge from the celebrity that once made her a household name.

A public tribute will be held nearby for admirers of the woman whose image once symbolized the liberation and sensuality of postwar France.

“Brigitte Bardot will always be associated with Saint-Tropez, of which she was the most dazzling ambassador,” the city council said last week. “With his presence, personality and aura, he marked the history of our town.”

Bardot settled decades ago in her coastal villa, La Madrague, and retired from filmmaking in 1973 at age 39, during an international career that spanned more than two dozen films.

She later emerged as an animal rights activist, founding and maintaining a foundation dedicated to the protection of animals.

“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told The News on her 73rd birthday in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of a suffering animal, since it has no power, no words to defend itself.”

His activism earned the respect of his compatriots and, in 1985, he received the Legion of Honor, the country’s highest recognition.

Although she retired from the film industry, she remained a highly visible and often controversial public figure throughout decades of militant animal rights activism and ties to far-right politics.

She will be buried in the so-called marine cemetery, where her parents are also buried.

The cemetery, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, is also the final resting place of several cultural figures, including filmmaker Roger Vadim, Bardot’s first husband, who directed her hit film “And God Created Woman,” a role that made her a global star.