Retired actress Brigitte Bardot, 76, once one of the sexiest women in film, is thinking about jumping into politics. But not for the people. Non, mon ami. She’s doing it for the animals.

Bardot said she’s seriously considering running for president of France because “we just need a voice to stand up and defend animal rights.”

At the heart of Bardot’s interest are Muslim ritual slaughter practices of livestock, which she says are inhumane. She wants the animals to be anesthetized before their throats are slit. President Nicolas Sarkozy was supposed to outlaw the practice but backed off from that stand recently.

“Because you do the opposite of what you say, I am studying a proposition from the Independent Ecology Alliance to be their presidential candidate in 2012,” Bardot said in a letter to Sarkozy published in the French press.

“We think she is the best person to represent us for the presidency,” Ecology Alliance party chairman Antoine Waechter said. “If she accepts, a final decision will be taken next year.”

Bardot has long been an animal rights advocate, and in fact, left show business in 1973 to devote her time to animal activism.

She has donated more than $140,000 for a mass sterilization and adoption program for Bucharest‘s stray dogs, is building an animal rescue facility at her home, and has campaigned tirelessly on behalf of dolphins, pandas and myriad other creatures.

However, she’s also gotten into trouble for expressing right-wing views on immigration, race mixing and homosexuality, and has been fined five times for making remarks that “incited racial hatred.” Most recently, she did this in 2008 and was fined £15,000 for writing that Muslims were destroying France.

Ironically, Bardot recently was quoted in a magazine interview as saying “Politics disgusts me.”

If she runs for president, she’ll have a whole lot of disgust to get used to.