Shakespeare once wrote of Cleopatra, "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety." The old Bard might just as well have been talking about France's ageless sex kitten, Brigitte Bardot, who turned 40 last September and on that occasion remarked, "Look at me, now that I am 40 years old. So what?" So what, indeed! As a birthday present to BB, her current lover, 25-year-old Laurent Vergez, took the photographs on these pages at BB's sumptuous villa in St.-Tropez, Vergez, who some of BB's closest friends predict will be the next Monsieur Bardot, is the newest in a list of lovers and husbands that includes Roger Vadim, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacques Charrier, Gunther Sachs, Bob Zaguri, Sacha Distel and many, many more. "No man can have any security in loving me," says BB. "The problem is to hold on to me. And that is difficult."
What does the most prominent sex symbol in the world demand in her men, besides physical attraction? "Complicity," says Bardot. "Not always having to speak to be understood, having passwords and mad coded laughs. Feeling like making love at the same moments and for the same reasons." Second to men on her list of favorites is man's best friend, the dog. Once, when visiting a home for stray dogs, BB, unable to resist their whines, stowed 15 dogs in her Rolls-Royce and took them home. This is where the term lucky dog was derived. Will Bardot fans ever see her on the screen again? "I am not interested in making movies anymore," she says, although she may do a stage tour of Italy in 1975. She is infatuated with the impresario. At 40, when life supposedly begins, the world's reigning sex kitten sums herself up in two short sentences. "I am not an actress," she says. "I am a phenomenon."
