Who Is Nicolas Charrier? Inside Brigitte Bardot’s Troubled Bond With Her Only Son Amid Her Death

French cinema would never be the same again after the death of Brigitte Bardot, one of its biggest legends. After her organisation confirmed the news, fans, industry insiders and media extended their condolences to her family. For those unaware, the late actress is survived by her husband, Bernard d'Ormale and her only son, Nicholas Charrier. However, despite being born into a world of glamour, Nicholas had a turbulent childhood and led an extremely private life. Yet, he became a subject of discussion when his emotional fallout with his mother became public. Here's everything you might want to know about him and the cause of their estrangement.

Who is Nicholas Charrier?

Brigitte Bardot welcomed her only son, Nicholas, on January 11, 1960, with her second husband, Jacques Charrier. However, unlike having typically motherly feelings and love, the actress admitted that she never desired to be a mother. Brigitte had extensively explained about her role as a mother in her memoir, Initiales B.B., where she wrote that she felt she was not "made to be a mother". After his parents' divorce, Nicholas was raised by his father and paternal grandparents, away from the media spotlight that surrounded his mother. According to The New York Times Archives, Brigitte gave birth to her son at their Paris Apartment. 

After growing up, Nicholas decided to life away from the global attention and controversies around his mother. According to French media outlets, he eventually settled in Norway as a Network Engineer, leading a quiet life with his wife, a former model, Anne-Line Bjerkan. They welcomed two daughters in the 1980s and have since had several grandchildren. Nicolas has rarely appeared in public due to his connection with Brigitte in legal disputes or family acknowledgements. In Brigitte's words:

"I didn't bring up Nicolas because I needed support, roots. I couldn't be Nicolas' roots because I was completely uprooted, unbalanced, lost in that crazy world."

What caused Brigitte Bardot's estrangement with her only son, Nicholas and did they ever reconcile? 

Brigitte Bardot and Nicolas did not have a conventional mother-son relationship. Instead, their bond was defined by distance, emotional pain and controversies. The late actress wrote in her memoir that Nicolas was an "object of misfortune", which was received by a lot of criticism and emotional hurt by several members of her family. 

After some work on the memoir's release in 1997, Nicholas and his father sued the actress for invasion of privacy and causing them emotional distress. According to The Independent, a Paris court asked Brigitte to pay around USD 40,000 in damages, and Nicolas even tried to censor some paragraphs of the book, which could not be done. 

After being estrangement for years, Brigitte Bardot's fourth husband and now widower, Bernard d'Ormale, once shared with People, that the late actress once reached out to Nicolas in the early 1990s. They could not heal the land, and the two eventually found limited peace, maintaining civil but distant ties.  In a 2024 feature for Paris Match, Brigitte explained that she rarely spoke publicly about Nicolas later in life because she had promised him privacy. On the other hand, Nicholas continued to live largely outside the public eye, while Bardot remained a highly public, often controversial figure in France. At present, Nicholas remains Brigitte's sole surviving child with not just a great family legacy but also an emotional story of an estranged mother-son relationship. 

Rest in peace, Brigitte Bardot. 

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