Brigitte Bardot slams Saint-Tropez after decades in jet-set port

Saint-Tropez's most famous resident, French screen siren Brigitte Bardot, has slammed the Riviera resort as a billionaires' playground where "nothing remains of what made it charming".

The 91-year-old made one of her most famous films, "And God Created Woman", in the Mediterranean port town to which she retreated in 1973 after turning her back on her film career.

In a new book, published in French as "Mon BBcedaire" ("My BB Alphabet"), she laments the loss of "such a pretty fishing village" that has become "a billionaires' town where nothing remains of what made it charming".

The withering criticism of her adopted home, whose image of glitz and glamour she helped create, is in keeping with the acid tone of the book, which also includes homophobic and anti-transgender comments. 

"Freedom is being yourself, even when it bothers others," Bardot, a conservative animal rights campaigner, writes in the foreword.

The Paris-born star of around 50 films opines that France has "become dull, sad, submissive, sick, damaged, ravaged, ordinary, vulgar". 

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Right-wing politicians are "the only urgent remedy to France's agony", adds Bardot, who has expressed support for anti-immigration far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the past.

The book is a collection of handwritten notes by Bardot, including her spelling mistakes and crossings-out, featuring words that start with A and finish with Z.

She also gives her verdicts on the leading French men of her generation, including Jean-Paul Belmondo -- "a great guy, a brilliant actor, funny and courageous" -- while Alain Delon "carries both the best and the worst within him".

Bardot, who speaks rarely in the media, published her memoirs in 1996.

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