Ask any fan of 1970s French hardcore porn classics to name the most famous star of the period and chances are you'll get the answer Brigitte Lahaie. This busty gallic goddess had a hardcore career that lasted just four years, before she went on to mainstream acting and later careers in television and radio presenting, but somehow she has remained the iconic face and body of Euro retro porn. Brigitte herself says her enduring popularity has always been something of a mystery to her. "Undoubtedly, I must symbolise something to many people but whatever it is, it escapes me. However I feel that this is also the case with many other artists," she argues.

The glorious natural curves of a namesake like Brigitte Bardot, of course, were part of the Lahaie magic. But there was something else - an insouciance, intelligence, hard to describe charm about her performances which always left you surprised when the actual hardcore scenes arrived that this was actually a woman who you might ever have dreamed would appear in an X-rated movie. And that surprise factor somehow never went away no matter how many movies you might have seen where she got down and dirty on screen.

There are probably plenty of people still around today who have watched late night cable softcore cuts of her movies or some of her later erotic only flicks who would be stunned to find this was an actress who had ever gone farther than just nudity. "I started acting in the world of cinema X without any particular goals. I just wanted to see what would happen," Brigitte says.

Born in Tourcoing, France, on 12 October 1955, curvy 36-24-36 beauty Brigitte made her first hardcore movie in 1976 at age 20 and her last, Les petites écolières aka French Sex Lessons in 1980. She was a huge star in adult films by that time and chose to retire from hardcore at the height of her popularity. It, perhaps, helped to put her back catalogue of XXX movies in to the hardcore collector's must-have category. She had met director Jean Rollin, who was working under a pseudonym on one of her hardcore movies, and he cast Brigitte in her first straight acting role Les Raisins de la Mort aka The Grapes of Death. She went on to make more horror movies with Rollin and also other cult director Jess Franco.

These days, to audiences in her native France, Brigitte Lahaie is more familiar as a radio and TV presenter. Her Radio Monte Carlo show 'Lahaie, l'Amour et Vous', which deals with serious discussions on sexuality, has also been transferred to a show she hosts for French adult TV channel XXL. Pay TV stations like Canal+ still regularly run special showcases of both her softcore and hardcore movies. Living quietly in the French countryside, where she indulges her passion for horses, Brigitte Lahaie has none of the often Anglo-Saxon later life apologeticness for an early life spent in porn. "I totally loved my time while making X movies and I don’t have a single regret," she says.