Emmanuel Macron leads tributes to celebrated sex symbol who later embraced animal rights activism and an increasingly controversial political stance

• Brigitte Bardot: a life in pictures

• Peter Bradshaw on Brigitte Bardot – a zeitgeist-force and France’s most sensational export

Tributes have been paid to Brigitte Bardot, the French actor and singer who became an international sex symbol before turning her back on the film industry and embracing the cause of animal rights activism, who has died aged 91.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, wrote on social media that Bardot had “embodied a life of freedom” and “universal brilliance”. France was mourning “a legend of the century”, he said.