PARIS -- Film director Roger Vadim, who pursued beauty both in film and in life, romancing some of the world's most sought-after actresses -- including Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda and Catherine Deneuve -- died Friday after a long struggle with cancer. He was 72.
"You wouldn't ask Rodin to make an ugly sculpture, or me to make a film with an ugly woman," Vadim once said of his devotion to female beauty in such classics as "And God Created Woman.""That's my style, that's my nature."
Tributes poured in for the filmmaker, who won renown both for his rich career and his headline-grabbing love life. He counted Bardot and Fonda among his five wives, and had a child with Deneuve, his companion between marriages.
In a statement issued by her office in Atlanta, Fonda said she had visited Vadim in the hospital last week and was "saddened by Roger's death. He will be missed."
"Apart from an original and important body of work, which sometimes rocked minds, he was more than anyone else, the filmmaker of life, of passion for life, of liberty," French President Jacques Chirac said.
"He hatched new talents and knew how to create myths, aided by some of the greatest actresses of the past few decades."
Among them was French siren Bardot, who won instant fame in the 1956 "And God Created Woman," the story of a young married woman's quest for sexual freedom.
The scene of a young Bardot dancing barefoot on a table remains one of the most titillating scenes in French cinema.
"I wanted to show a normal young girl whose only difference was that she behaved in the way a boy might, without any sense of guilt on a moral or sexual level," Vadim said.
The film defined the content and set the tone for many of Vadim's movies, including the 1968 "Barbarella," an avant-garde sci-fi romp starring his new wife, Fonda.
Vadim also earned praise as a producer, writer and theater director in a career that spanned half a century. His most recent work included several made-for-television mini-series. His films were sometimes superficial in content, but always technically strong and full of visual elegance.