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She raised 3m francs (then about £300,000) to establish the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, by auctioning off her jewellery and film memorabilia.

Bardot - or B.B. as she was known in France - campaigned against the annual seal cull in Canada, and irritated some of her countrymen by condemning the eating of horse meat.

She became a vegetarian, attacked the Chinese government for "torturing" bears, and spent hundreds of thousands on a programme to sterilise Romanian stray dogs.