Age, Biography, and Wiki
Audrey Hepburn was born on May 4, 1929, in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium, to a British father and a Dutch mother. She rose to fame during Hollywood's Golden Age, known for her elegance and talent. Hepburn's life was marked by both personal and professional triumphs, including her humanitarian work for UNICEF. She passed away on January 20, 1993, at the age of 63.
| Occupation | Stage Actress |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 4 May 1929 |
| Age | 96 Years |
| Birth Place | Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium |
| Horoscope | Taurus |
| Country | Switzerland |
| Date of death | 20 January, 1993 |
| Died Place | Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland |
Height, Weight & Measurements
- Height: 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm)
- Weight: Approximately 110 lbs (50 kg)
- Measurements: Not extensively documented, but she was known for her slender figure.
Although filmed in the summer of 1962 before Charade, Hepburn reunited with her Sabrina co-star William Holden in Paris When It Sizzles (1964), a screwball comedy in which she played the young assistant of a Hollywood screenwriter, who aids his writer's block by acting out his fantasies of possible plots. Its production was troubled by several problems. Holden unsuccessfully tried to rekindle a romance with the now-married Hepburn, and his alcoholism was beginning to affect his work. After principal photography began, she demanded the dismissal of cinematographer Claude Renoir after seeing what she felt were unflattering dailies. Superstitious, she also insisted on dressing room 55 because that was her lucky number and required that Hubert de Givenchy, her long-time designer, be given a credit in the film for her perfume. Dubbed "marshmallow-weight hokum" by Variety upon its release in April, the film was "uniformly panned" but critics were kinder to Hepburn's performance, describing her as "a refreshingly individual creature in an era of the exaggerated curve".
Hepburn's influence as a style icon still continued several decades after the height of her acting career in the 1950s and 1960s. Moseley notes that especially after her death in 1993, she became increasingly admired, with magazines frequently advising readers on how to get her look, and fashion designers using her as inspiration. Throughout her career and after her death, Hepburn received numerous accolades for her stylish appearance and attractiveness. For example, she was named the "most beautiful woman of all time" and "most beautiful woman of the 20th century" in polls by Evian and QVC respectively, and in 2015, was voted "the most stylish Brit of all time" in a poll commissioned by Samsung. Her film costumes fetch large sums of money in auctions: one of the "little black dresses" designed by Givenchy for Breakfast at Tiffany's was sold by Christie's for a record sum of £467,200 in 2006.
| Height | 5 feet 7 inches |
| Weight | 110 lbs |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Audrey Hepburn was married twice:
- First Marriage: Mel Ferrer (married in 1954, divorced in 1968)
- Second Marriage: Andrea Dotti (married in 1969, divorced in 1982)
- Last Relationship: Robert Wolders (from 1980 until her death in 1993)
She was known to her family as Adriaantje. She was raised Protestant and remained one throughout her life. Hepburn's mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra (1900–1984), was a Dutch noblewoman. Ella was the daughter of Baron Aarnoud van Heemstra, who served as the mayor of Arnhem from 1910 to 1920 and as the governor of Dutch Guiana from 1921 to 1928, and Baroness Elbrig Willemine Henriette van Asbeck (1873–1939), a granddaughter of Count Dirk van Hogendorp. At age 19, she married Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford – an oil executive based in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, where the couple subsequently lived. Before divorcing in 1925, they had two sons, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander Quarles van Ufford (1920–1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (1924–2010).
Hepburn's father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889–1980), was a British subject born in Auschitz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. He was the son of Victor John George Ruston, who was of British and German-Austrian background, and Anna Juliana Franziska Karolina Wels, who was of German-Austrian origin and born in Kovarce. In 1923–1924, he was an Honorary British Consul in Semarang, Dutch East Indies and, prior to his marriage to Hepburn's mother, was married to Cornelia Bisschop, a Dutch heiress. Joseph later changed his surname to the more "aristocratic" double-barrelled Hepburn-Ruston, perhaps at Ella's insistence, as he mistakenly believed himself descended from James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.
Hepburn's parents were married in Batavia in 1926. At the time, Joseph worked for a trading company, but soon after the marriage, the couple moved to Europe, where he began working for a loan company; reportedly tin merchants MacLaine, Watson, and Company in London. After a year in London, they moved to Brussels, where he had been assigned to open a branch office. After three years spent traveling between Brussels, Arnhem, The Hague and London, the family settled in the suburban Brussels municipality of Linkebeek in 1932. Hepburn's early childhood was sheltered and privileged. Due to her father's job, the family travelled back and forth between three countries, enhancing her multinational background.
In the mid-1930s, Hepburn's parents recruited and collected donations for the British Union of Fascists (B.U.F). Ella met Adolf Hitler and wrote favourable articles about him for the B.U.F. Joseph left the family abruptly in 1935 after a "scene" in Brussels. He subsequently moved to London, where he became more deeply involved in the Fascist activity and never visited Hepburn abroad. That same year, Ella moved to her family's estate in Arnhem with her daughter; her sons, Alex and Ian, were sent to The Hague to live with relatives. Joseph wanted Hepburn to be educated in the United Kingdom, so in 1937, she was sent to live in Kent, where she, known as Audrey Ruston or "Little Audrey", was educated at a small private school in Elham. Her parents officially divorced the next year. Later in her life, she often spoke of the effect on a child of being "dumped" as "children need two parents"; she said that her father's departure was "the most traumatic event of my life". In the 1960s, Hepburn renewed contact with her father after locating him in Dublin through the Red Cross; she supported him financially until his death although he remained emotionally detached.
After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Hepburn's mother moved her daughter back to Arnhem in the hope that, as during the First World War, the Netherlands would remain neutral and be spared a German attack. While there, Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945. She had begun taking ballet lessons during her last years at boarding school, and continued training in Arnhem under the tutelage of Winja Marova, becoming her "star pupil". After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn used the name Edda van Heemstra, because an "English-sounding" name was considered dangerous during the German occupation. Her family was profoundly affected by the occupation, with Hepburn later stating that "had we known that we were going to be occupied for five years, we might have all shot ourselves. We thought it might be over next week… six months… next year… that's how we got through".
In 1942, her uncle, Otto van Limburg Stirum (husband of her mother's older sister, Miesje), was executed in retaliation for an act of sabotage by the resistance movement; while he had not been involved in the act, he was targeted due to his family's prominence in Dutch society. These family events were the turning point in the attitude of Hepburn's mother, who had flirted with Nazism up to this point. Hepburn's half-brother Ian was deported to Berlin to work in a German labour camp, and her other half-brother Alex went into hiding to avoid the same fate.
In addition to other traumatic events, she witnessed the transportation of Dutch Jews to concentration camps, later stating that "more than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on the train. I was a child observing a child."
After the war ended in 1945, Hepburn moved with her mother and siblings to Amsterdam, where she began ballet training under Sonia Gaskell, a leading figure in Dutch ballet, and Russian teacher Olga Tarasova. Due to the loss of the family fortune, Ella had to support them by working as a cook and housekeeper for a wealthy family. Hepburn made her film debut playing an air stewardess in Dutch in Seven Lessons (1948), an educational travel film made by Charles van der Linden and Henry Josephson. Later that year, Hepburn moved to London after accepting a ballet scholarship with Ballet Rambert, which was then based in Notting Hill. She supported herself with part-time work as a model, and dropped "Ruston" from her surname. After she was told by Rambert that despite her talent, her height and weak constitution (the after-effect of wartime malnutrition) would make the status of prima ballerina unattainable, she decided to concentrate on acting. While Ella worked in menial jobs to support them, Hepburn appeared as a chorus girl in the West End musical theatre revues High Button Shoes (1948) at the London Hippodrome, and Cecil Landeau's Sauce Tartare (1949) and Sauce Piquante (1950) at the Cambridge Theatre. Also, in 1950, she worked as a dancer in an exceptionally "ambitious" revue, Summer Nights, at Ciro's London, a prominent nightclub.
Hepburn also returned to the stage in 1954, playing a water nymph who falls in love with a human in the fantasy play Ondine on Broadway. A critic for The New York Times commented that "somehow, Miss Hepburn is able to translate [its intangibles] into the language of the theatre without artfulness or precociousness. She gives a pulsing performance that is all grace and enchantment, disciplined by an instinct for the realities of the stage". Her performance won her the 1954 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play three days after she won the Academy Award for Roman Holiday, making her one of three actresses to receive the Academy and Tony Awards for Best Actress in the same year (the other two are Shirley Booth and Ellen Burstyn). During the production, Hepburn and her co-star Mel Ferrer began a relationship, and were married on 25 September 1954 in Switzerland.
Although she appeared in no new film releases in 1955, Hepburn received the Golden Globe for World Film Favorite that year. Having become one of Hollywood's most popular box-office attractions, she starred in a series of successful films during the remainder of the decade, including her BAFTA- and Golden Globe-nominated role as Natasha Rostova in War and Peace (1956), an adaptation of the Tolstoy novel set during the Napoleonic wars, starring Henry Fonda and her husband Mel Ferrer. She exhibited her dancing abilities in her debut musical film, Funny Face (1957), wherein Fred Astaire, a fashion photographer, discovers a beatnik bookshop clerk (Hepburn) who, lured by a free trip to Paris, becomes a beautiful model. Hepburn starred in another romantic comedy, Love in the Afternoon (also 1957), alongside Gary Cooper and Maurice Chevalier.
Hepburn next appeared opposite Cary Grant in the comic thriller Charade (1963), playing a young widow pursued by several men who chase after the fortune stolen by her murdered husband. The 59-year-old Grant, who had previously withdrawn from the starring male lead roles in Roman Holiday and Sabrina, was sensitive about his age difference with 34-year-old Hepburn, and was uncomfortable about the romantic interplay. To satisfy his concerns, the filmmakers agreed to alter the screenplay so that Hepburn's character was pursuing him. The film turned out to be a positive experience for him; he said, "All I want for Christmas is another picture with Audrey Hepburn." The role earned Hepburn her third, and final, competitive BAFTA Award, and another Golden Globe nomination. Critic Bosley Crowther was less kind to her performance, stating that, "Hepburn is cheerfully committed to a mood of how-nuts-can-you-be in an obviously comforting assortment of expensive Givenchy costumes."
Hepburn appeared in an assortment of genres including the heist comedy How to Steal a Million (1966). Hepburn played the daughter of a famous art collector, whose collection consists entirely of forgeries that are about to be exposed as fakes. Her character plays the part of a dutiful daughter trying to help her father with the help of a man played by Peter O'Toole. The film was followed by two films in 1967. The first was Two for the Road, a non-linear and innovative British dramedy that traces the course of a couple's troubled marriage. Director Stanley Donen said that Hepburn was freer and happier than he had ever seen her, and he credited that to co-star Albert Finney. The second, Wait Until Dark, is a suspense thriller in which Hepburn demonstrated her acting range by playing the part of a terrorised blind woman. Filmed on the brink of her divorce, it was a difficult film for her, as husband Mel Ferrer was its producer. She lost 15 pounds under the stress, but she found solace in co-star Richard Crenna and director Terence Young. Hepburn earned her fifth and final competitive Academy Award nomination for Best Actress; Bosley Crowther affirmed, "Hepburn plays the poignant role, the quickness with which she changes and the skill with which she manifests terror attract sympathy and anxiety to her and give her genuine solidity in the final scenes."
At a cocktail party hosted by mutual friend Gregory Peck, Hepburn met American actor Mel Ferrer, and suggested that they star together in a play. The meeting led them to collaborate in Ondine, during which they began a relationship. Eight months later, on 25 September 1954, they were married in Bürgenstock, Switzerland, while preparing to star together in the film War and Peace (1956).
Hepburn met her second husband, Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, on a Mediterranean cruise with friends in June 1968. She believed she would have more children and possibly stop working. While pregnant with Luca in 1969, Hepburn was more careful, resting for months before delivering the baby via caesarean section. Hepburn suffered a miscarriage in 1974.
From 1980 until her death in 1993, Hepburn was in a relationship with Dutch actor Robert Wolders, the widower of actress Merle Oberon. She had met Wolders through a friend during the later years of her second marriage. In 1989, she called the nine years she had spent with him the happiest years of her life, and stated that she considered them married, just not officially.
Hepburn's legacy has endured long after her death. The American Film Institute named Hepburn third among the greatest female stars of American cinema. She is one of few entertainers who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards. She won a record three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role. She received a tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 1991 and she was a frequent presenter at the Academy Awards. She received the BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992. She was the recipient of numerous posthumous awards, including the 1993 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and competitive Grammy and Emmy Awards. In January 2009, Hepburn was named on The Times' list of the top 10 British actresses of all time. In 2010, Emma Thompson opined that Hepburn "can't sing and she can't really act"; some people agreed, others disagreed. Hepburn's son Sean later said "My mother would be the first person to say that she wasn't the best actress in the world. But she was a movie star."
Sean Ferrer founded the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund in memory of his mother shortly after her death. The US Fund for UNICEF also founded the Audrey Hepburn Society: the Society hosted annual charity balls for fundraising, until Ferrer became involved in lawsuits in the late 2010s on behalf of his mother's estate. Dotti also became patron of the Pseudomyxoma Survivor charity, dedicated to providing support to patients of the rare cancer that was fatal to Hepburn, pseudomyxoma peritonei, and Sean Ferrer became the rare disease ambassador since 2014 and for 2015 on behalf of European Organisation for Rare Diseases. A year after his mother's death in 1993, Ferrer founded the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund (originally named Hollywood for Children Inc.), a charity funded by exhibitions of Audrey Hepburn memorabilia. He directed the charity in cooperation with his half-brother Luca Dotti, and Robert Wolders, his mother's partner, which aimed to continue the humanitarian work of Audrey Hepburn. Ferrer brought the exhibition "Timeless Audrey" on a world tour to raise money for the foundation. He served as Chairman of the Fund before resigning in 2012, turning over the position to Dotti. In 2017, Ferrer was sued by the Fund for alleged self-serving conduct. In October 2017, Ferrer responded by suing the Fund for trademark infringement, claiming that the Fund no longer had the right to use Hepburn's name or likeness. Ferrer's suit against the Fund was dismissed in March 2018 due to the complaint's failure to include Dotti as a defendant. In 2019, the court sided with Ferrer, with the judge ruling there was no merit to the charity's claims it had the independent right to use Audrey Hepburn's name and likeness, or to enter into contracts with third parties without Ferrer's consent.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Mel Ferrer (m. 1954-1968) Andrea Dotti (m. 1969-1982) |
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Net Worth and Salary
At the time of her death in 1993, Audrey Hepburn's net worth was estimated at $55 million, which is equivalent to about $100 million today when adjusted for inflation. Her salary from various films included:
- Roman Holiday (1952): $12,500
- Sabrina (1953): $15,000
- Producers' Showcase (1953): $150,000
- Funny Face (1956): $150,000
- War and Peace (1955): $350,000
Career, Business, and Investments
Audrey Hepburn's career spanned decades, with notable films including "Roman Holiday," "Sabrina," "Funny Face," "Breakfast at Tiffany's," and "My Fair Lady." Her humanitarian work with UNICEF began in the 1950s but intensified in her later years. Hepburn was a fashion icon and a successful businesswoman, although specific business investments are not well-documented.
Hepburn won three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role. In recognition of her film career, she received BAFTA's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award and the Special Tony Award. In December 1992, Hepburn received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. A month later, she died of appendix cancer at her home in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland, at the age of 63.
During her theatrical work, she took elocution lessons with actor Felix Aylmer to develop her voice. After being spotted by the Ealing Studios casting director, Margaret Harper-Nelson, while performing in Sauce Piquante, Hepburn was registered as a freelance actress with the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC). She appeared in the BBC Television play The Silent Village, and in minor roles in the films One Wild Oat, Laughter in Paradise, Young Wives' Tale, and The Lavender Hill Mob (all 1951). She was cast in her first major supporting role in Thorold Dickinson's Secret People (1952), as a prodigious ballerina, performing all of her own dancing sequences.
Critics applauded Hepburn's performance. Crowther wrote that, "The happiest thing about [My Fair Lady] is that Audrey Hepburn superbly justifies the decision of Jack Warner to get her to play the title role." Gene Ringgold of Soundstage also commented that, "Audrey Hepburn is magnificent. She is Eliza for the ages", while adding, "Everyone agreed that if Julie Andrews was not to be in the film, Audrey Hepburn was the perfect choice." The reviewer in Time magazine said her "graceful, glamorous performance" was "the best of her career". Andrews won an Academy Award for Mary Poppins at the 1964 37th Academy Awards and Hepburn earned Best Actress nominations for Golden Globe and New York Film Critics Circle awards.
In the 1950s, Hepburn narrated two radio programmes for UNICEF, re-telling children's stories of war. In 1989, Hepburn was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF. On her appointment, she stated that she was grateful for receiving international aid after enduring the German occupation as a child, and wanted to show her gratitude to the organisation.
Hepburn received numerous awards and honours during her career. Hepburn won, or was nominated for, awards for her work in motion pictures, television, spoken-word recording, on stage, and humanitarian work. She was five-times nominated for an Academy Award, and she was awarded the 1953 Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Roman Holiday and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993, posthumously, for her humanitarian work. From five nominations, she won a record three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role, and received a BAFTA Special Award in 1992.
Social Network
Audrey Hepburn did not have a personal social network profile, as she passed away before the widespread use of social media. However, her legacy is maintained through fan pages and tributes on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Hepburn went on to star in a number of successful films, such as Sabrina (1954), with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden; Funny Face (1957), a musical in which she sang her own parts; the drama The Nun's Story (1959); the romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961); the thriller-romance Charade (1963), opposite Cary Grant; and the musical My Fair Lady (1964).
After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse, and Arnhem was subsequently heavily damaged during Operation Market Garden. During the 1944–45 Dutch famine, the Germans hindered or reduced the already limited food and fuel supplies to civilians in retaliation for Dutch railway strikes that were held to disrupt the occupation. Like others, Hepburn's family resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits, a source of starchy carbohydrates; Dutch doctors provided recipes for using tulip bulbs throughout the famine. Suffering from the effects of malnutrition, after the war ended Hepburn became gravely ill with jaundice, anaemia, oedema, and a respiratory infection. In October 1945, a letter from Ella asking for help was received by Micky Burn, a former lover and British Army officer with whom she had corresponded while he was a prisoner of war in Colditz Castle. He sent back thousands of cigarettes, which she was able to sell on the black market and thus buy the penicillin which saved Hepburn's life. The Van Heemstra family's financial situation changed significantly through the occupation, during which time many of their properties (including their principal estate in Arnhem) were damaged or destroyed.
Hepburn had her first starring role in Roman Holiday (1953), playing Princess Ann, a European princess who escapes the reins of royalty and has a wild night out with an American newsman (Gregory Peck). On 18 September 1951, shortly after Secret People was finished but before its premiere, Thorold Dickinson made a screen test with the young starlet and sent it to director William Wyler, who was in Rome preparing Roman Holiday. Wyler wrote a glowing note of thanks to Dickinson, saying that "as a result of the test, a number of the producers at Paramount have expressed interest in casting her." The producers of the film had initially wanted Elizabeth Taylor for the role, but Wyler was so impressed by Hepburn's screen test that he cast her instead. Wyler later commented, "She had everything I was looking for: charm, innocence, and talent. She also was very funny. She was absolutely enchanting, and we said, 'That's the girl! Originally, the film was to have had only Gregory Peck's name above its title, with "Introducing Audrey Hepburn" beneath in smaller font. Peck suggested Wyler elevate her to equal billing so her name appears before the title, and in type as large as his: "You've got to change that because she'll be a big star, and I'll look like a big jerk."
Hepburn was signed to a seven-picture contract with Paramount, with 12 months in between films to allow her time for stage work. She was featured on 7 September 1953 cover of Time magazine, and also became known for her personal style. Following her success in Roman Holiday, Hepburn starred in Billy Wilder's romantic Cinderella-story comedy Sabrina (1954), in which wealthy brothers (Humphrey Bogart and William Holden) compete for the affections of their chauffeur's innocent daughter (Hepburn). For her performance, she was nominated for the 1954 Academy Award for Best Actress, while winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role the same year. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times stated that she was "a young lady of extraordinary range of sensitive and moving expressions within such a frail and slender frame. She is even more luminous as the daughter and pet of the servants' hall than she was as a princess last year, and no more than that can be said."
Hepburn played Sister Luke in The Nun's Story (1959), which focuses on the character's struggle to succeed as a nun, alongside co-star Peter Finch. The role produced a third Academy Award nomination for Hepburn, and earned her a second BAFTA Award. A review in Variety reads: "Hepburn has her most demanding film role, and she gives her finest performance", while Henry Hart in Films in Review stated that her performance "will forever silence those who have thought her less an actress than a symbol of the sophisticated child/woman. Her portrayal of Sister Luke is one of the great performances of the screen." Hepburn spent a year researching and working on the role, saying, "I gave more time, energy, and thought to this role than to any of my previous screen performances".
Following The Nun's Story, Hepburn received a lukewarm reception for starring with Anthony Perkins in the romantic adventure Green Mansions (1959), in which she played Rima, a jungle girl who falls in love with a Venezuelan traveller, and The Unforgiven (1960), her only western film, in which she appeared opposite Burt Lancaster and Lillian Gish in a story of racism against a group of Native Americans.
Hepburn next starred as New Yorker Holly Golightly in Blake Edwards's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), a film loosely based on the Truman Capote novella of the same name. Capote disapproved of many changes that were made to sanitise the story for the film adaptation, and would have preferred Marilyn Monroe to have been cast in the role, although he also stated that Hepburn "did a terrific job". The character is considered one of the best-known in American cinema, and a defining role for Hepburn. The dress she wears during the opening credits has been considered an icon of the 20th century, and perhaps the most famous "little black dress" of all time. Hepburn stated that the role was "the jazziest of my career" yet admitted: "I'm an introvert. Playing the extroverted girl was the hardest thing I ever did." She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
Hepburn's first field mission for UNICEF was to Ethiopia in 1988. She visited an orphanage in Mek'ele that housed 500 starving children and had UNICEF send food. Of the trip, she said, "I have a broken heart. I feel desperate. I can't stand the idea that two million people are in imminent danger of starving to death, many of them children, [and] not because there isn't tons of food sitting in the northern port of Shoa. It can't be distributed. Last spring, Red Cross and UNICEF workers were ordered out of the northern provinces because of two simultaneous civil wars... I went into rebel country and saw mothers and their children who had walked for ten days, even three weeks, looking for food, settling onto the desert floor into makeshift camps where they may die. Horrible. That image is too much for me. The 'Third World' is a term I don't like very much, because we're all one world. I want people to know that the largest part of humanity is suffering."
Hepburn toured Central America in February 1989, and met with leaders in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In April, she visited Sudan with Wolders as part of a mission called "Operation Lifeline". Because of civil war, food from aid agencies had been cut off. The mission was to ferry food to southern Sudan. Hepburn said, "I saw but one glaring truth: These are not natural disasters but man-made tragedies for which there is only one man-made solution – peace." In October 1989, Hepburn and Wolders went to Bangladesh. John Isaac, a UN photographer, said, "Often the kids would have flies all over them, but she would just go hug them. I had never seen that. Other people had a certain amount of hesitation, but she would just grab them. Children would just come up to hold her hand, touch her – she was like the Pied Piper."
In October 1990, Hepburn went to Vietnam, in an effort to collaborate with the government for national UNICEF-supported immunisation and clean water programmes. In September 1992, four months before she died, Hepburn went to Somalia. Calling it "apocalyptic", she said, "I walked into a nightmare. I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this – so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn't prepared for this." Though scarred by what she had seen, Hepburn still had hope stating: "As we move into the twenty-first century, there is much to reflect upon. We look around us and see that the promises of yesterday have to come to pass. People still live in abject poverty, people are still hungry, people still struggle to survive. And among these people we see the children, always the children: their enlarged bellies, their sad eyes, their wise faces that show the suffering, all the suffering they have endured in their short years."
She has been the subject of many biographies since her death, including the 2000 dramatisation of her life titled The Audrey Hepburn Story which starred Jennifer Love Hewitt and Emmy Rossum as the older and younger Hepburn respectively. Her son and granddaughter, Sean and Emma Ferrer, helped produce a biographical documentary directed by Helena Coan, entitled Audrey (2020). The film was released to positive reception.
Hepburn was known for her fashion choices and distinctive look, to the extent that journalist Mark Tungate has described her as a recognisable brand. When she first rose to stardom in Roman Holiday (1953), she was seen as an alternative feminine ideal that appealed more to women than men, compared to the more sexual and curvy Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. With her short hairstyle, thick eyebrows, slim body, and "gamine" looks, she presented a look that young women found easier to emulate than those of more sexual film stars. In 1954, fashion photographer Cecil Beaton declared Hepburn the "public embodiment of our new feminine ideal" in Vogue, and wrote that "Nobody ever looked like her before World War II ... Yet we recognise the rightness of this appearance in relation to our historical needs. The proof is that thousands of imitations have appeared." The magazine and its British version frequently reported on her style throughout the following decade. Alongside model Twiggy, Hepburn has been cited as one of the key public figures who made being very slim fashionable. Vogue has referred to her as "the acme of classic beauty".
In her private life, Hepburn preferred to wear casual and comfortable clothes, contrary to the haute couture she wore on screen and at public events. Despite being admired for her beauty, she never considered herself attractive, stating in a 1959 interview that "you can even say that I hated myself at certain periods. I was too fat, or maybe too tall, or maybe just plain too ugly... you can say my definiteness stems from underlying feelings of insecurity and inferiority. I couldn't conquer these feelings by acting indecisive. I found the only way to get the better of them was by adopting a forceful, concentrated drive." In 1989, she stated that "my look is attainable ... Women can look like Audrey Hepburn by flipping out their hair, buying the large glasses and the little sleeveless dresses."
Education
Hepburn's education is somewhat formal and informal, with an early interest in dance and ballet. She attended the Arnhem Conservatory in the Netherlands for ballet training but did not complete a formal degree due to the onset of World War II.
Despite her passing, Audrey Hepburn remains an iconic figure in both the film industry and the world of fashion, with her legacy continuing to inspire new generations of artists and humanitarians.
Born into an aristocratic family in Ixelles, Brussels, Hepburn spent parts of her childhood in Belgium, the UK, and the Netherlands. She attended boarding school in Kent from 1936 to 1939. With the outbreak of World War II, she returned to the Netherlands. During the war, Hepburn studied ballet at the Arnhem Conservatory, and by 1944 she was performing ballet to raise money to support the Dutch resistance. She studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam beginning in 1945 and with Marie Rambert in London from 1948.
Alongside her native English and Dutch, Hepburn also had some fluency in French (which she learned at school in Belgium), German, Italian, and Spanish. Throughout her life, Hepburn lived in many countries, including spending her childhood in Belgium, England, and the Netherlands, and her adult years in the United States, Italy, and Switzerland, and travelled extensively during her later years of life as part of her humanitarian work with UNICEF.
Looking for a house, she focused on the French-speaking part of Switzerland, the Romandie, to avoid Sean learning German in school – an echo of her traumatic wartime childhood. She bought the 21-room country estate "La Paisible" ("The Peaceful One") in the country village of Tolochenaz, Vaud. The remote estate, surrounded by high walls, suited her desire for privacy, and Hepburn was fond of cooking with the produce from its extensive vegetable gardens.
