By SYLVIE CORBET Associated Press
PARIS (AP) — The funeral for Brigitte Bardot will be held next week in Saint-Tropez, the glamorous French Riviera resort she helped make famous and where she lived for more than a half-century, local authorities said.
The cinema star and animal rights activist died Sunday at the age of 91 at her home in southern France.
A ceremony is scheduled on Jan. 7 at the Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption Catholic Church and will be broadcast on two large screens set up at the port and on the Place des Lices central square, Saint-Tropez town hall said in a statement Monday.
The burial will then take place “in the strictest privacy” at a cemetery overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, according to the statement. The ceremony will be followed by a public homage for fans at a nearby site.
“Brigitte Bardot will forever be associated with Saint-Tropez, of which she was the most dazzling ambassador,” the statement said. “Through her presence, personality and aura, she marked the history of our town.”
The movie star settled in her Riviera villa, La Madrague, in Saint-Tropez and retired from the film industry in 1973 at age 39.
The so-called marine cemetery, where Bardot’s parents are buried, is also the final resting place of other celebrities, including filmmaker Roger Vadim, Bardot’s first husband.
Bardot’s younger sister, Marie-Jeanne Bardot, known as Mijanou, posted on Facebook a photo of Brigitte at age 12, accompanied by a message honoring “the one I adored more than anything.”
She wrote that Bardot now “knows whether our beloved pets are waiting for us on the other side.
“Let her not be afraid, and let her instead be in the love and joy of reuniting with them all.”