Entertainment

Brigitte Bardot, the French movie icon and sex symbol and animal rights activist, has died. She was 91.

The news was announced on the website of her Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals, with a banner reading, “Thank you Brigitte. A lifetime and a foundation dedicated to serving animals.”

“The Brigitte Bardot Foundation announces with immense sadness the death of its Founder and President, Mrs. Brigitte Bardot, a world-renowned actress and singer, who chose to give up her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare and her Foundation,” read a statement.

A spokesperson for the Foundation told the Associated Press that Bardot died Sunday at her home in France. No cause of death was announced.  

Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, wrote on X, “Her films, her voice, her dazzling glory, her initials, her sorrows, her generous passion for animals … Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom. French existence, universal brilliance. She touched us. We mourn a legend of the century.”

Bardot initially studied ballet, but then became a model, which led to her being cast in a number of films. Her breakthrough was 1956’s And God Created Woman, written and directed by her then-husband, Roger Vadim. Her portrayal of a hedonistic young woman made her a worldwide star, sex symbol and style icon, while the film was credited with paving the way for French filmmakers and movies to find a global audience.

Bardot became so revered in France that from 1969 to 1972, she became the model for “Marianne,” the female figure who has personified the country since the French Revolution.

Bardot went on to work with directors like Jean-Luc Godard and Louis Malle, earning acclaim and the French Legion of Honor. She retired from acting in 1973 and devoted her life to protecting animals, establishing her Foundation in 1986. 

Later in life, Bardot became controversial for her right-wing politics and was convicted and fined multiple times by French courts for “inciting racial hatred.” 

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Dearest gentle reader, the trailer for Bridgerton Season 4, Part 1 is finally here — and “all the eyes of the ton” are on Benedict Bridgerton.

The trailer features Luke Thompson as Benedict and Yerin Ha as Sophie Baek, his love interest, and it packs all the romance and magic we all have been longing for.

The trailer opens with Golda Rosheuvel‘s Queen Charlotte introducing another social season, and Nicola Coughlan‘s Penelope Featherington kicking things off as Lady Whistledown.

Penelope then focuses on Benedict, who is described as the “season’s most notorious gentleman,” with a clip of his mother, Ruth Gemmell‘s Violet Bridgerton, telling him to get his act together and “meet the right young lady.”

Clips of Violet planning a masquerade ball are interspersed with clips of a new household in Mayfair, where Sophie is the family’s maid. Sophie has a Cinderella moment as she attends the ball in a borrowed silver gown and a mask that hides her identity. She meets an intrigued Benedict, but when the clock strikes midnight, she runs away, leaving only her glove behind.

Benedict spends the rest of the trailer searching for her, never realizing that the maid he keeps running into is his dream woman.

“Behind the cover of a mask, anything can happen,” Lady Whistledown says in the trailer, adding, “With a little imagination, the impossible seems possible.”

The season is based on Julia Quinn’s third Bridgerton novel, An Offer From a Gentleman. 

Bridgerton Season 4, Part 1, arrives on Netflix on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026, with the first four episodes. Part 2 will arrive on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026.

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Actor and comedian Patrick Finn, best known for his role in ABC’s The Middle, has died, according to a statement from his family.

Finn, 60, died on Dec. 22 following a three-year battle with bladder cancer, which had been in remission but then returned.

Finn began his career as an improv comedian alongside his college pal Chris Farley. His first big break in television came on The George Wendt Show, where he played the brother of Wendt’s character, George Coleman. He went on to recurring roles in shows like Murphy Brown and 3rd Rock from the Sun, and played Bill Norwood on The Middle from 2010 to 2018. 

Seinfeld fans knew Finn as Joe Mayo, a character in the episode “The Reverse Peephole,” while Friends fans would remember him as Dr. Roger, Monica’s boyfriend in the episodes “The One That Could Have Been, Part 1” and “The One That Could Have Been, Part 2.”

Finn also appeared in films like Dude, Where’s My Car and It’s Complicated, and was an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado and his alma mater, Marquette University.

He’s survived by his wife, Donna Finn, and their three children as well as his parents and siblings.

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The combination of host Ariana Grande, musical guest Cher and departing cast member Bowen Yang proved to be a ratings winner for Saturday Night Live.

According to Variety, the Dec. 20 installment of the show, which also marked Yang’s final appearance, drew 5.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched episode in over a year. The last episode to attract a larger audience  aired in November of 2024, when John Mulaney hosted and brought in 6.8 million viewers.

In general, Ariana Grande hosting alongside a female Rock & Roll Hall of Famer as the musical guest seems to be a great combination for SNL. Prior to Mulaney’s episode, Grande’s October 2024 hosting stint with a performance by Stevie Nicks was the show’s most-watched episode since 2021.

During the Dec. 20 episode, Grande and Cher appeared in Yang’s farewell sketch, in which he played a Delta airport lounge employee on his final shift. Grande portrayed his wife, while Cher played his boss. The trio sang “Please Come Home for Christmas,” and an emotional Yang concluded the sketch by saying, “I just feel so lucky that I ever got to work here.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

The combination of host Ariana Grande, musical guest Cher and departing cast member Bowen Yang proved to be a ratings winner for Saturday Night Live.

According to Variety, the Dec. 20 installment of the show, which also marked Yang’s final appearance, drew 5.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched episode in over a year. The last episode to attract a larger audience  aired in November of 2024, when John Mulaney hosted and brought in 6.8 million viewers.

In general, Ariana Grande hosting alongside a female Rock & Roll Hall of Famer as the musical guest seems to be a great combination for SNL. Prior to Mulaney’s episode, Grande’s October 2024 hosting stint with a performance by Stevie Nicks was the show’s most-watched episode since 2021.

During the Dec. 20 episode, Grande and Cher appeared in Yang’s farewell sketch, in which he played a Delta airport lounge employee on his final shift. Grande portrayed his wife, while Cher played his boss. The trio sang “Please Come Home for Christmas,” and an emotional Yang concluded the sketch by saying, “I just feel so lucky that I ever got to work here.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians has added three new actors to its cast. Holt McCallany joins the ensemble of the Disney+ series in season 3 as Atlas. He will appear in a recurring guest role as the pivotal villain and the third season’s primary antagonist. Also joining the cast are David Costabile as Dr. Thorn and Jesse L. Martin as Annabeth’s father, Frederick Chase …

The film The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender will no longer get a theatrical release. Instead, Deadline reports the animated feature will make its debut on Paramount+. The film, which was directed by Lauren Montgomery with Steve Ahn and William Mata, previously had the release date of Oct. 9, 2026. Its voice cast includes Taika Waititi, Geraldine Viswanathan, Dee Bradley Baker, Freida Pinto and Ke Huy Quan …

Two classic characters from the original Star Trek series will make their first appearances in the finale of the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Variety reports the characters Hikaru Sulu and Leonard “Bones” McCoy will appear in the episode, played by actors Kai Murakami and Thomas Jane …

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If you’re not careful, you can find out that it’s not clocking to you that you haven’t been standing on business by knowing all of the cultural trends that happened this year. That’s why we’re going over the memes, viral moments and trend-setting sensations that dominated the cultural landscape of 2025:

No one could get enough of Labubus this year. The collectible plush toys, which were created by Hong Kong illustrator Kasing Lung, are fluffy monsters with pointy teeth, large ears and a playful look on their face. They’re exclusively sold by the retailer Pop-Mart, although knockoff versions of the product, known as Lafufus, also took the world by storm. While most people don’t usually get to pick which color Labubu appears in their blind box, TikTok user Lilzbullzmarbella infamously showed off her gold one. “I have the one and only 24 carat gold Labubu,” she says in a video that went viral.

Here’s one that we’ll do our best to explain, but you may want to consult your youngest family member for more. The phrase 6-7, pronounced six seven, was completely unavoidable this year. YouTuber Cam Wilder posted a video in which a young boy named Maverick Trevillian is seen yelling, “Six seven,” while doing a hand gesture moving upward-facing palms up and down. Video edits of Maverick doing this went viral, and the phrase, which has no fixed meaning, became a meme popular with Gen Alpha.

It was the video we all cringed at but couldn’t look away from. A couple, locked in an intimate embrace, were caught allegedly cheating on their respective spouses while on the kiss cam at a Coldplay concert this summer. Former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and its head of human resources, Kristin Cabot, immediately pulled apart from each other just as Coldplay’s Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.”

A video of Justin Bieber speaking to the paparazzi sparked an internet phenomenon this year. “You’re not getting it. It’s not clocking to you. It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business, is it?” Bieber asks the photographers. The phrase became so popular that Bieber himself referenced it in his SWAG track “STANDING ON BUSINESS.”

Finally, the TikTok audio referred to as “Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday,” which featured an old advertisement for the Jet2 airline mixed with the 2015 song “Hold My Hand” by Jess Glynne, took the world by storm. Everyone was using the cheerful audio to ironically post disastrous videos from vacations gone wrong.

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Somehow, Steve Rogers returned.

Marvel has publicly released the first teaser trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, and it stars Chris Evans back in his role of the former Captain America, Steve Rogers. This teaser trailer, which was released Tuesday, arrives after footage leaked of it playing in theaters ahead of early screenings of Avatar: Fire and Ash.

The trailer finds Steve riding a motorcycle up to a farmhouse where he presumably lives. We see a close-up of his hand, showing off that he wears a wedding band on his ring finger. As the Avengers main theme plays, Steve then heads inside the home, where he cradles a newborn baby close to his chest.

He also pulls his Captain America suit out of storage to give it a nostalgic once-over.

The teaser ends with a black screen and text that reads, “Steve Rogers will return in Avengers: Doomsday.”

Directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo took to Instagram to share the new teaser, writing, “The character that changed our lives. The story that brought us all here together. It was always going to come back to this.”

Evans has not appeared as Steve Rogers in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, where he passed the title of Captain America on to his close friend, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie).

Avengers: Doomsday will arrive in theaters on Dec. 18, 2026.

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The wife of The Wire actor James Ransone is remembering her late husband following his death at age 46.

Jamie McPhee posted a tribute to Instagram on Sunday remembering her husband, who died by suicide on Dec. 19, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.

“I told you I have loved you 1000 times before and I know I will love you again,” McPhee wrote in the post’s caption, alongside a photo of her and Ransone.

“You told me – I need to be more like you and you need to be more like me – and you were so right. Thank you for giving me the greatest gifts – you, Jack and Violet. We are forever,” she added, referencing the couple’s children.

Ransone, a Baltimore native, was best known for playing Chester “Ziggy” Sobotka, a Baltimore dock worker and criminal, in season 2 of The Wire.

In addition to The Wire, Ransone played a variety of roles in shows including Treme, Low Winter Sun, How to Make It in America, Bosch and Generation Kill. He also took on an array of film roles in titles such as It Chapter Two, Inside Man, In a Valley of Violence, and Sinister and Sinister 2.

Ransone had previously spoken about the difficulties he faced in his personal life over the years.

In 2016, the actor discussed his past substance abuse issues and getting sober in his 20s in an interview with Interview magazine.

“I woke up at 27 after being on heroin for five years. It was like I sobered up and I realized, ‘My job is being an actor. This is crazy!'” he said at the time.

Tributes for Ransone poured in following his death from high-profile directors like Spike Lee and Sean Baker, with whom Ransone had worked in the past.

“Rest In Peace To My Dear Brother, MR. JAMES RANSONE. We Rocked Together On RED HOOK SUMMER And INSIDE MAN,” Lee wrote in an Instagram post featuring him and Ransone.

Anora director Baker also shared a photo of himself with Ransone. “I’ll miss you dearly my friend,” Baker wrote.

ABC News has reached out to Ransone’s representative for comment.

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide — free, confidential help is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call or text the national lifeline at 988.

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The final trailer for season 4 of Industry has arrived. The upcoming, eight-episode fourth season of the drama series premieres on Jan. 11. It will debut new episodes weekly on HBO and HBO Max. Myha’la stars alongside Kit Harington and Marisa Abela in the new season …

The Smashing Machine is smashing onto HBO Max next month. The drama film starring Dwayne Johnson makes its streaming debut on Jan. 23. Benny Safdie directed the biopic about UFC heavyweight champ Mark Kerr, which also stars Emily Blunt …

Disney has changed the premiere dates of several of its upcoming theatrical releases. Deadline reports that the horror sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come has moved up its debut, now set to premiere on March 27. Ridley Scott‘s next film The Dog Stars, which features Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Guy Pearce and Margaret Qualley, will now debut on Aug. 28. Additionally, the Pixar animated feature Gatto is now going to make its theatrical release on March 5, 2027 …

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