Brigitte Bardot then
While most of the stars on the list peaked through the seventies, for French actress Brigitte Bardot, the seventies marked the finish line of her career in the entertainment industry. It wasn’t because the public has stopped admiring her, but it was a conscious choice to quit at her prime, before she was forced out.
Bardot took Hollywood by storm during the fifties; she started as a model at the age of fifteen, and by the time she was eighteen, she graced two covers on Elle magazine. Following her role in Act of Love (1953), alongside Kirk Douglas, Bardot attended the Cannes Film Festival, where she received extensive media attention that jump-started her Hollywood career. Throughout the second part of the decade, the young actress appeared in four major films that put her on the Hollywood map.