Nineteen handwritten love letters by Brigitte Bardot failed to find a buyer at Christie's in Paris on Tuesday, 3 November, despite carrying an estimate of €100,000 to €150,000. The correspondence, written to the French screen icon's second husband, actor Jacques Charrier, dates from about 1959 to 1963, a period covering the early years of their marriage.

Bardot, who died in Saint-Tropez on 28 December 2025 at the age of 91, wrote the letters in a frank and vulnerable register that contrasts sharply with the tightly managed public image she maintained during her film career. Adrien Legendre, who leads Christie's books and manuscripts department, has said the letters show a very different side of the actress from the persona audiences knew. The group was consigned by a private collector who had acquired it from Charrier.

The unsold result stands in marked contrast to the appetite for Bardot's belongings seen earlier this autumn. In September, 285 items from her homes in Saint-Tropez and Paris, offered by Millon, fetched €953,531 against a combined pre-sale estimate of about €50,000. The letters, by comparison, were pitched as an intimate archive rather than a set of decorative objects, and bidders on the day did not meet the reserve.

Attention around Bardot's private life has intensified since her death, including the emergence of a separate letter to her longtime partner Bernard d'Ormale, with whom her estate is now in dispute. The Christie's result suggests that, for all the continuing fascination with the star, the market draws a line between memorabilia with broad decorative appeal and personal correspondence whose value rests on its emotional content.