ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, September 28, 1996 TAG: 9609300099
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PARIS
SOURCE: MARILYN AUGUST ASSOCIATED PRESS
Renowned at one time as one of the world's most desirable women, Brigitte Bardot bares all in an autobiography that describes her life surrounded by playboys, paparazzi and loneliness.
``Initials B.B.,'' published in French by Grasset, went on sale Tuesday. It begins with the former starlet's comfortable bourgeois upbringing and ends with her life today as a staunch supporter of animal rights.
In between are the details of three failed marriages, suicide attempts and countless love affairs with the likes of Sami Frey, Sacha Distel, Warren Beatty, Nino Ferrer and her former husbands - director Roger Vadim, actor Jacques Charrier and millionaire Gunter Sachs.
``I had a visceral need to be loved, to be desired, to belong body and soul to the man I admire, whom I love, whom I respect,'' she wrote of her passion for singer Serge Gainsbourg.
Bardot rose to international fame in the 1956 film ``And God Created Woman,'' directed by Vadim. Scenes of the long-legged beauty dancing on table tops in the buff triggered scandals - and gave life to her ``sex kitten'' image.
The book ends the silence she imposed upon herself after retiring from acting in 1973. In an interview with the daily Le Figaro published Tuesday, Bardot said she wrote the book to straighten the record of her private life.
Bardot, who turns 62 this month, began the book while gloomy over her 40th birthday. She insisted every line was her own, even showing one reporter the 1,500-page hand-written manuscript.
She is highly critical of Catherine Deneuve, who later married Vadim, and makes no bones about being slapped around by Charrier, who fathered her only son.
She is chilly toward French screen idol Alain Delon, saying he is as handsome and cold as her Louis XVI commode.
Delon preferred looking at the camera rather than into her pretty face, she wrote. For Bardot, he has hardly improved with age, having - in her eyes - lowered himself to promoting the fur industry.
``He and Sophia Loren make a pair,'' she said. Loren has also appeared in fur ads.
Beatty, she wrote, helped her recovery from an unhappy romance.
``Warren had a ferocious charm that was impossible to resist. Why or for whom would have I resisted him?'' she wrote.
Yet Bardot hardly seduces every man she meets. Pablo Picasso kept his distance while giving her a tour of his studio.
``There was no more starlet, just a young woman enchanted by a demi-god,'' she wrote. ``He was simple, intelligent, somewhat indifferent and adorable.''
Marlon Brando was another story. Eager to catch a glimpse of the great Hollywood actor, Bardot dressed up as a chamber maid and delivered breakfast to his hotel room.
Stunned by the smelly, unkempt room and Brando's disheveled countenance, she dropped the tray.
``He took the eggs and smashed them against the walls, before falling back to sleep, swimming in orange juice, coffee, milk, broken eggs and fame,'' she wrote.
Bardot has kind words for extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom she describes as a ``lovely, intelligent man revolted, as I am, by certain things,'' such as immigration.
Bardot's husband, Bernard d'Ormale, is a friend of Le Pen.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: headshot of Bardotby CNB