On film sets today, the catering van will typically dispense bacon sandwiches and a sliver of quiche. In 1965, in Mexico on the set of Viva Maria! with director Louis Malle, they ate lunch as if celebrating a best friend’s wedding. Waited on by staff, Brigitte Bardot (who was nominated for a Bafta for her portrayal of a dance-hall girl turned revolutionary) enjoyed the soup course, with a feast to follow.

Eight years later she announced her retirement from the entertainment business, in order to focus on animal rights. After 47 films it was the end of long on-set feasts, and the beginning of a new career in activism, and convictions for inciting racial hatred, after remarks about Islam. Following the most recent, in 2008, on her website she claimed her defence was that she was objecting to the slaughter of animals for Eid.

In 1986 she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals, and became a vocal vegetarian. Her chef in St Tropez learned to prepare her dishes with only cheese and vegetables, inviting her grandson Frédéric to live with them and act as sous chef. Frédéric van Coppernolle, then a teenager, later told the New York Times about fishing with a hook and line, baited with a paste of gruyère and bread, from the end of Bardot’s dock. It was 1980, and Bardot was 45, beautiful, unpredictable and obsessed with animal welfare. She saw the teenager and his hook and started shouting. The fish, she said, knew this was her house, the house of vegetarian activist Brigitte Bardot, and if they were caught they would feel “betrayed”. He started to pack away his line, and she scoffed. There was no need to stop altogether. No, he should just fish over the other side of the wall, where the fish had fewer expectations.