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Audrey Hepburn

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Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn (4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was an iconic Academy Award-winning actress, fashion model and humanitarian.

Hepburn had the reputation of being a humble, kind and charming person, who lived the philosophy of putting others before herself. She showed this side particularly towards the end of her life in her work for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). She has often been called the most beautiful woman of all time, most recently in a 2006 poll for New Woman magazine. She was ranked as the third greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute (AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars.)

Early life

Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Brussels, Belgium, she was the only child of John Victor Hepburn-Ruston[1], an Anglo-Irish banker, and Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat descended from French and English kings. Her father later appended the name Hepburn to his surname, and her surname became Hepburn-Ruston. She had two half-brothers, Alexander and Ian Quarles van Ufford, by her mother's first marriage to a Dutch nobleman. She is one of the descendents of King Edward III of England. [2]

Hepburn attended private schools in England and the Netherlands. Her mother was very strict and her father was more easy-going which led her to prefer him. He left the family when Audrey was young. She later called his abandonment the most traumatic moment of her life. (Years later she located her father in Dublin through the Red Cross and supported him financially until his death. He was never able to reciprocate her love.)[3] After the 1935 divorce of her parents, she was living with her mother at Arnhem, Netherlands when the German invasion and occupation of World War II occurred. At that time she adopted the pseudonym Edda Van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents to do so, because an "English-sounding" name was considered dangerous. This was never her legal name.[4]

After the landing of the Allied Forces on D-Day, things grew worse under the German occupiers. During the Dutch famine over the winter of 1944, brutality increased and the Nazis confiscated the Dutch people's limited food and fuel supply for themselves. Without heat in their homes, or food to eat, people in the Netherlands starved and froze to death in the streets; particularly so in Arnhem, which was devastated during allied bombing raids that were part of Operation Market Garden. Hepburn's uncle and a cousin of her mother's were shot for being part of the Resistance. Hepburn's brother spent time in a German labor camp. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed several health problems. She would stay in bed and read to take her mind off the hunger. She danced ballet for groups of people to collect money for the underground movement. These times weren't all bad and she was able to enjoy some of her childhood. Hepburn said in a 1992 interview, "As long as he has the minimum, a child is perfectly cheerful. I remember also having lots of fun. We didn't just sit on the floor for five years and cry. Of course, there was always a cloud of fear and repression, and terrible things were going on." The stories of her and her family eating tulip bulbs to survive have been exaggerated. The tulip bulbs were used to make a fine green flour for making cakes and cookies.[5]

When the tanks came in and Holland was liberated, relief-agency trucks followed. Hepburn once reminisced that she opened a can of condensed milk and ate it all, and then got sick from one of her first relief meals because she put too much sugar in her oatmeal.[6]. As UNICEF saved her early in life, she would later give back to UNICEF starting in 1954 with radio presentations.

Rise to stardom

File:AudreyHepburnInSabrina.JPG
Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina.

After the war, Hepburn and her mother moved to London, where she studied ballet, danced in nightclub acts and revues, worked as a model, and in 1951, began acting in films, mostly in minor or supporting roles as Audrey Hepburn. She got into acting mainly to make money so that her mother would not have to work menial jobs to support them. Her first major performance was in the 1951 film The Secret People, in which she played a ballet dancer. Audrey had trained in ballet since childhood and won critical acclaim for her talent, which she showcased in the film. However, her teachers had deemed her "too tall" to be a professional ballet dancer, since, at 5'7", she was taller than many of the male dancers. She was chosen to play the lead character in the Broadway play Gigi that opened on 24 November 1951. The writer Colette upon first seeing Hepburn reportedly said, "Voilà! There's our Gigi!"[7] She won a Theatre World Award for her debut performance, and it had a successful six-month run in New York City.

She was then offered a starring role opposite Gregory Peck in the Hollywood motion picture, Roman Holiday. Peck saw her star quality and insisted she share top billing. For her performance, she won the 1953 Academy Award for Best Actress. Years later, when asked by Barbara Walters what her favorite film was,[citation needed] Hepburn answered without hesitation, Roman Holiday, because it was the one that made her a star.

Hollywood stardom

After Roman Holiday she filmed Sabrina with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, with whom she had a brief romance. Many believe Holden considered Audrey to be the love of his life, and she would go on to appear with him again in the comedy Paris, When It Sizzles.

In 1954, Audrey went back to the stage playing the water sprite in Ondine in a performance with Mel Ferrer, whom she would wed later that year. For her performance in Ondine, Hepburn was awarded the Tony Award for Best Actress (1954) which, coming only six weeks after her academy award for Roman Holiday, solidified her reputation as both a film and stage star. By the mid 1950s Hepburn also came to be regarded as a major style icon, her gamine appearance and widely recognised sense of chic being both admired and imitated.

Having become one of Hollywood's most popular box-office attractions, Audrey Hepburn co-starred with other major actors such as Fred Astaire in Funny Face, Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon, George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Cary Grant in the critically acclaimed hit Charade, Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, Peter O'Toole in How to Steal a Million, and Sean Connery in Robin and Marian. Many of these leading men became very close to her. Rex Harrison called Audrey his favorite leading lady; Cary Grant loved to humor her and once said, "all I want for Christmas is to make another movie with Audrey Hepburn;" and Gregory Peck became a lifelong friend. After her death, Peck went on camera and tearfully recited her favorite poem, "Unending Love." Some believe Bogart and Hepburn did not get along, but this is untrue. Bogart got along better with Hepburn than anyone else on set; he later apologized to Billy Wilder for his behavior.

Hepburn's performance as "Holly Golightly" in 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's resulted in one of the most iconic characters in 20th Century American cinema. Her performance as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady is perhaps equally as iconic.

Hepburn was at the center of a controversy in 1964 with the filming of My Fair Lady, due to her casting as Eliza Doolittle instead of then-unknown Julie Andrews, who had originated the role on Broadway. The decision not to cast Andrews was made before Hepburn was cast for the role. Hepburn initially refused the role and asked Jack Warner to give it to Andrews, but when they informed her that it would either be her or Elizabeth Taylor, who was vying for the role, she decided to take the part. Julie Andrews had yet to make Mary Poppins, which was released within the same year as My Fair Lady. Audrey recorded singing vocals for the role, but subsequently discovered a professional "singing double" Marni Nixon had overdubbed all of her songs. She is said to have walked off the set after being told of the dubbing, returning the next day apologizing for her behavior. Footage of several songs with Hepburn's original vocals still exist and have been included in documentaries and the DVD release of the film, though to date, only Nixon's renditions have been released on LP and CD. Some of her original vocals remained in the film, such as "Just You Wait" and snippets from "I Could Have Danced All Night". Many fans believe that her vocals should have been kept in the film, at least during the first half when she still has a Cockney accent and her voice is not as refined.

The controversy over Hepburn's casting reached its height at the 1964-65 Academy Awards season, when Hepburn was not nominated for best actress while Andrews was nominated for Mary Poppins. The media tried to play up the rivalry between the two actresses as the ceremony approached, even though both women denied such bad feelings existed and got along well. Julie Andrews won "Best Actress" at the ceremony. Andrews, however, later revealed she thought her Oscar win was just Hollywood politics.

From 1967 onward, after fifteen highly successful years in film, Hepburn acted only occasionally. After her divorce from first husband Mel Ferrer, she remarried Italian psychiatrist Dr. Andrea Dotti and had a second son, after a difficult pregnancy that required near-total bed rest. After her eventual separation from Dotti, she attempted a comeback, co-starring with Sean Connery in the period piece Robin and Marian in 1976, which was moderately successful, but not up to the usual standards of a Hepburn hit film. Surprisingly, she turned down the seemingly made-to-order role of a former ballet dancer in The Turning Point. (Shirley MacLaine got the part, and the successful film invigorated her career.) She later said that turning down the part was the biggest regret of her career. Hepburn made another comeback try in 1979, starring in Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline: Pulp author Sheldon's books were so popular his name was included in the film's title, no doubt leading Hepburn to think she had picked a winner. She hadn't. Among the reviewers, even Hepburn's admirers-- and there were still many-- could not recommend the film due to its hackneyed material.

Hepburn's last starring role in a film was with her new flame Ben Gazzara in the modern comedy They All Laughed, a small, hip and breezy picture-- a real departure for Hepburn-- directed by Peter Bogdanovich. A critical success, the film was overshadowed by the brutal murder of one of its stars, Bogdanovich's girlfriend, Dorothy Stratten; the film was released after Stratten's murder at age 20 and was not a major hit. In 1987, she co-starred with Robert Wagner in a tongue-in-cheek made-for-television caper film, Love Among Thieves which borrowed elements from several of Hepburn's films, most notably Charade and How to Steal a Million. The TV-film was only a moderate success, with Hepburn being quoted that she appeared in it just for fun.

Hepburn's last film role, a cameo appearance, was of an angel in Steven Spielberg's Always, filmed in 1988. A rare Spielberg fizzle, few got to enjoy Hepburn looking, indeed, angelic, before the film was pulled from theaters.

Work for UNICEF

Soon after Hepburn's final film role, she was appointed a special ambassador to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Grateful for her own good fortune after being a victim of the Nazi occupation as a child, she dedicated the remainder of her life to helping impoverished children in the world's poorest nations.

Though she had done work for UNICEF in the 50's, this was a much higher dedication. Those close to her say that the thoughts of dying, helpless children consumed her for the rest of her life. She visited countries in Africa and South Asia as part of UNICEF programs. She dedicated herself to spreading awareness of the conditions of these nations and doing what she could to help directly. In one interview, she mentioned buying camels and solar boxes so medicines could be delivered to a village in the middle of a desert. She worked tirelessly for UNICEF and various causes in Africa and other South Asian countries, even in the last months of her life.

In 1992, President George Bush presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work with UNICEF, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded her The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her contribution to humanity. This was awarded posthumously, and her son accepted the award on her behalf.

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1652 Vine Street.

Marriages and death

File:Bataud1.jpg
Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).

In the early 1950s she was engaged to the young James Hanson. She called it "love at first sight;" however, after having her wedding dress fitted and date set, she decided the marriage would not work, due to the demands of his career that would require him to be gone on business most of the time. She had the wedding dress given to a poor Italian couple, who still have it today.

Hepburn did marry, twice: to American actor Mel Ferrer and to an Italian doctor, Andrea Dotti, and had a son to each husband—Sean in 1960 by Ferrer, and Luca in 1970 by Dotti.

Hepburn met Mel Ferrer at a party hosted by Gregory Peck, and quickly fell in love with him. After Sabrina, Audrey went back to the stage, this time with Ferrer in a play called Ondine, in which she played a water sprite. Ferrer was rumored to be perhaps too controlling of Hepburn, but in William Holden's words, "I think Audrey allows Mel to think he influences her."

She married him on 25 September 1954. The marriage lasted 14 years until 5 December 1968; their son was quoted as saying Hepburn stayed in the marriage too long. In the later years of the marriage, Ferrer was rumored to have had a girlfriend on the side, while Hepburn had an affair with her handsome Two for the Road co-star, Albert Finney. After the marriage fell apart, Hepburn met Italian psychologist, Andrea Dotti on a cruise and fell in love with him on a trip to Greek ruins. She believed she would have many children, and possibly stop working. She married him on 18 January 1969. Although Dotti loved Hepburn and was well-liked by Sean, who called him "fun," Dotti had affairs with younger women. The marriage lasted 13 years and ended in 1982 after Luca and Sean were old enough to handle life with a single mother.

At the time of her death, she was the companion of Robert Wolders, a handsome Dutch actor who was the widower of film star Merle Oberon. She met Wolders through a friend, in the later stage of her marriage to Dotti. Six months later, they met again for a drink, which turned into dinner. They fell in love, and after Hepburn's divorce from Dotti was final, she and Wolders started their lives together, although they never married. In 1989, after nine years with him, she called them the happiest years of her life. "Took me long enough," she said in an interview with Barbara Walters. Walters also asked why she never married Wolders. Hepburn replied that they were married, just not formally. Hepburn and Wolders planned the UNICEF trips together. At every one of her moving speeches, Wolders would watch and sometimes shed tears.

In late 1992, Hepburn began to feel pains in her stomach, which turned out to be a rare form of cancer that originated in the appendix. Hepburn had surgery in a Los Angeles hospital, but the cancer continued to spread, and when she went in for surgery, doctors discovered it was too far gone to attempt surgery or chemotherapy. Hepburn died of colorectal cancer on 20 January 1993, in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland at the age of 63, and was interred there.

Filmography

People associate me with a time when movies were pleasant, when women wore pretty dresses in films and you heard beautiful music. I always love it when people write me and say 'I was having a rotten time, and I walked into a cinema and saw one of your movies, and it made such a difference.'

Audrey Hepburn

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The DVD cover of My Fair Lady

In addition to the above, Hepburn hosted the 1993 television series, Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn for PBS, a nine-episode documentary series which premiered on the day of her death. She also appeared in an April 1952 episode of CBS Television Workshop entitled "Rainy Day at Paradise Junction" which predates her "official" American debut in Roman Holiday. According to some biographies, Hepburn claimed to have made "several" American and British TV appearances before Roman Holiday, and a poster for a 1951 British public appearance listed her as a TV actress, but so far "Rainy Day" is the only example of this early work to have surfaced; a copy of this production exists in the Museum of Radio and Television archives in Beverly Hills, California and New York City, New York.

Some sources (including the Internet Movie Database) erroneously state that Hepburn had a cameo appearance in the 1963 film, A New Kind of Love, but this was debunked by several reviewers when the film was released to DVD in 2005.

Awards

She won the 1953 Academy Award for Best Actress for Roman Holiday. She was nominated for Best Actress four more times; for Sabrina (1954 awards), The Nun's Story (1959 awards), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961 awards), and Wait Until Dark (1967 awards).

File:Bataudrey.jpg
Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

There was Oscar controversy in 1964 when Audrey was not even nominated for her "loverly" performance as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, possibly her best and most beloved performance. This may be due to the fact that her singing was mostly dubbed by Marni Nixon.

For her 1967 nomination, the Academy chose her performance as a terrorized blind woman in Wait Until Dark, over her critically acclaimed performance in Two For The Road. However she lost to Katharine Hepburn (in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner).

Audrey Hepburn was one of the few people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award, although this distinction was arrived at posthumously.

Preceded by Academy Award for Best Actress
1953
for Roman Holiday 		Succeeded by

Biographical film

To date only one biographical film based upon Audrey Hepburn's life has been attempted. The 2000 American made-for-television film, The Audrey Hepburn Story starred Jennifer Love Hewitt as the actress. Hewitt also co-produced the film. The film received poor reviews due to numerous factual errors and for Hewitt's performance. The film concludes with footage of the real Audrey Hepburn, shot during one of her final missions for UNICEF. Several versions of the film exist; it was aired as a mini-series in some countries, and in a truncated version on America's ABC television network, which is also the version released on DVD in North America.

Quotes

  • "I am more than ever awed and overwhelmed by the monumental talents it was my great, great privilege to work for and with. There is therefore no way I can thank you for this beautiful award without thanking all of them, because it is they who helped and honed, triggered and taught, pushed and pulled, dressed and photographed - and with endless patience and kindness and gentleness, guided and nurtured a totally unknown, insecure, inexperienced, skinny broad into a marketable commodity. I am proud to have been in a business that gives pleasure, creates beauty, and awakens our conscience, arouses compassion, and perhaps most importantly, gives millions a respite from our so violent world. Thank you, Screen Actors Guild and friends, for this huge honor - and for giving me this unique opportunity to express my deepest gratitude and love to all of those who have given me a career that has brought me nothing but happiness." -For receiving the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1992. Julia Roberts accepted the award on her behalf.
  • "I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person."
  • "I was born with something that appealed to an audience at that particular time...I acted instinctively. I've had one of the greatest schools of all - a whole row of great, great directors."
  • "Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it all in at once."
  • "I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true."
  • "As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself... All of which I've earned a living doing."
  • "For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge you'll never walk alone ... People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed and redeemed and redeemed. Never throw out anybody. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm. As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others." - Written by Sam Levenson, recited by and often attributed to Audrey Hepburn.

Postage stamp

In 2003, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp honoring her. It has a drawing of her which is based on a publicity photo for her movie, Sabrina. Hepburn is one of the few non-Americans to be so honored.

Trivia

  • Hepburn spoke French, Italian, English, Dutch/Flemish, and Spanish. Spanish was previously unconfirmed, but there is UNICEF footage of her in Mexico speaking fluent Spanish to locals.
  • Height: 5'7", Weight: 110 lbs, Measurements: 34-20-34.
  • Suffered several miscarriages in her lifetime which led to some clinical depression. While filming The Unforgiven, Hepburn broke her back after falling off a horse onto a rock. She spent weeks in the hospital. She later had a miscarriage that was probably induced by the physical and mental stress. While she was resting at home, Mel Ferrer brought her the fawn from the movie Green Mansions to keep as a pet. They called him Ip, short for Pippin. When she was pregnant with Luca in 1969, she rested for months and passed the time by painting. One of her paintings can be found at http://www.thefairestlady.com/audrey/galleries/drawing3.jpg.
  • Hepburn had the following pets: Mr. Famous, a Yorkshire Terrier. He was hit by a car and killed. To cheer her up, Mel Ferrer got her another Yorkshire named Assam of Assam. She also kept Ip the fawn as a pet; they made a bed for him out of the bathtub. Sean Ferrer had a Cocker Spaniel named Cokey. When Hepburn was older, she had two Jack Russell Terriers.
  • It is sometimes claimed that Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn were sisters. The truth is they were only very distantly related, and certainly had never met before Audrey Hepburn's rise to prominence. The closest relationship that has been identified for them is 19th cousin once removed. It has also been claimed that Audrey Hepburn chose her last name in honor of Katharine Hepburn when she became an actress, however, the record shows that it was part of her family name for some time before she entered show business.
  • One of her hobbies growing up in the 1940's was drawing. Some of her artwork can be found at http://www.audrey1.com/gallery/results.php?cat=Audrey+drawings
  • Hepburn is considered by many in Japan as a model for feminine beauty, a theme explored in Alan Brown's novel Audrey Hepburn's Neck (ISBN 0671526723).
  • Hepburn only flew coach in airplanes. She never desired to live glamorously. Her houses were comfortably large with extensive gardens, but without being extravagant.
  • Sleeping Beauty's Princess Aurora was said to be drawn after Hepburn because the artist was in love with her looks.
  • Everyone remembers when Marilyn Monroe serenaded President John F. Kennedy on his birthday in 1962. What is often forgotten is that Hepburn sang "Happy Birthday Mr. President" to JFK for his final birthday in 1963.
  • According to Sean Ferrer, Hepburn's favorite movies of her own were The Nun's Story, which was socially important, and Funny Face, which she had a lot of fun filming mainly because she got to dance with Fred Astaire. However, she said in a Barbara Walters interview that Roman Holiday was dearest to her.
  • Her favorite poem was "Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore.
  • Opera diva Maria Callas reportedly loved Hepburn's look so much that she adopted it for herself in the 1950s.
  • Joked with Wait Until Dark director Terence Young that he was shelling his favorite star years before. Young was a tank commander during the Battle of Arnhem. Contrary to some reports, Hepburn was never a nurse for Young during the war.
  • In the late eighties and early nineties, her favorite television show was L.A. Law.

Further reading

References

1. Sean Hepburn Ferrer, Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit: A Son Remembers, New York: Atria, 2003.

2. Barry Paris, Audrey Hepburn, New York: Putnam, 1996.

3. Siegel, Jessica. "Audrey Hepburn on a Role." 20 Jan. 1992. <http://www.jessicaseigel.com/articles/hepburn.shtml>.

See also

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