In pictures: Brigitte Bardot at 70

1 of 9 French actress Brigitte Bardot celebrates her 70th birthday on Tuesday. Here she poses in a Park Lane hotel on her first visit to London in February 1955 to promote the film Doctor at Sea, in which she starred opposite Dirk Bogarde.

2 of 9 A 23-year-old Bardot in January 1958, the year in which she would appear in movies En Cas de Malheur and Les Bijoutiers du Clair de Lune.

3 of 9 French singer Sacha Distel was spotted in public with Bardot in Antibes, southern France, in August 1958. Distel died in July aged 71.

4 of 9 Bardot posed in the garden of the Excelsior Hotel, Venice, in September 1958 before her movie En Cas de Malheur is screened at the Venice film festival.

5 of 9 Bardot raised a toast during a Rome press conference for the Jean-Luc Godard-directed movie Il Disprezzo in April 1963.

6 of 9 Bardot returned to Orly Airport in Paris in May 1965, wearing a souvenir of her trip to Mexico, where she worked on the film Viva Maria.

7 of 9 A fervent animal rights campaigner, Brigitte Bardot answers questions during a television programme supporting the French Animal Protection Society in Paris, in February 1982.

8 of 9 Bardot met Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in September 1995. After abandoning her film career, she was convicted of inciting racial violence after criticising the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep.

9 of 9 Of her 70th birthday, she told French magazine Ohla!: "Thank God for allowing me to make it this far. But, all the same, I would prefer turning 30."