Exclusive photos of Brigitte Bardot before her film fame surface

London: Photos of a teenaged Brigitte Bardot have been rediscovered in France.

The snaps present a hitherto unknown picture of an innocent Bardot before she rose to stardom in the world of cinema. Annie Boulat found the pics in an old brown envelope when she was cleaning the cellar at her family home in Paris. The exclusive photos, never before seen in Britain and France for more than 50 years, were believed to have been lost. These photographs were snapped by Boulat`s late husband, the French society photographer Pierre Boulat, who lived in the same apartment building as Bardot, who at the time was just 16 or 17 years old. Pierre Boulat worked for Life magazine and died in 1998 at the age of 73. The photos reveal Bardot as an innocent, unassuming schoolgirl playing the fool in the early 1950s, before "And God Created Woman" was to turn the mousey-haired teen into an international star. The snaps show Bardot in braids and ballet pointes, sucking her thumb, playing with her dog and pulling faces. "My husband always spoke about having photographed Brigitte Bardot but we could never find the photos or the negatives," the Telegraph quoted Boulat, 72, as saying. She added: "Then recently I was sorting out the cellar at our home and throwing lots of stuff out when I came across an unremarkable brown envelope. I was going to throw it on the pile with the other stuff I was getting rid of, but when I looked inside I saw the contact sheets of around 30 photos of Brigitte Bardot." Boulat believes the pics were taken in 1951 when her husband lived in Rue de la Pompe in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, where Bardot lived with her family. She said: "I think Pierre came across here in the building, told her he was a photographer and asked if she would post for him. The photos were all taken in one sitting." ANI