Audrey Hepburn Audrey Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston was born in Brussels on May 4, 1929 in the family of a wealthy English banker and a Dutch baroness. She spent her early childhood travelling between England, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Her parents divorced when she was six. Then came the war. Her mother moved with Audrey to her parents’ home in the neutral Netherlands. The following year the country was invaded by the Nazis. It was a difficult time for the whole family. There was very little food. Audrey and her family had to dig vegetables from the hard frozen ground, for some time they survived on flour made from tulip bulbs.
Audrey’s greatest love was music. She wanted to be a dancer, and she studied dancing since she was five. In 1948, Audrey and her mother moved to London. Audrey went to a ballet school. She worked hard at her dancing. She had no time for boyfriends. But one day the ballet school teacher told her, ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll never be a famous dancer. You’re too tall.’
Audrey was sad, but then something happened. She was given a small part in a big London musical. She quickly found jobs in other musicals. Everybody liked this thin girl with a pretty face and wide smile.
When Audrey was twenty, she had small parts in several movies and during the filming of a movie she met a famous novelist and screenwriter Colette. Colette wanted to find a girl for the Broadway musical of her book, Gigi. When she saw Audrey, she said. ‘She is Gigi! Half-woman, half-boy.’ This role won Hepburn a Theatre World Award in 1952.
The same year a Hollywood movie producer offered her the part of a princess in a big new movie, Roman Holiday. The film was a great success and Audrey won an Oscar for Best Actress.
Audrey starred in about 30 films, among them were War and Peace (1956), Break fast at Tiffany's (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), How to Steal a Million (1965). But she always made it clear that family was more important for her than work. She was married twice and had two sons. After her second son was born in 1970, she said: ‘I don’t want to make any more movies. I’m happy as a good wife and mother.’ However, her second marriage ended in divorce — just like the first one.
Since 1970 Audrey lived a quiet life in her house in Switzerland raising her two sons. She only made two or three more movies, and they were not very good. She made them because she needed money.
When she became older, she wanted to do something more important with her life. She started to work for the United Nations. She was officially appointed UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. She visited the poorest and most dangerous countries in the world. In 1992, she travelled to Africa for the last time. When she came back, she was seriously ill. The doctors thought it was some infection, but it was cancer. On January 20, 1993, Audrey Hepburn died. She was sixty-four.
Audrey was one of the few actresses who became the symbol of their time, whose look was imitated by thousands of girls. She became and stayed the symbol of elegance, glamour, charm, and grace. As one of film critics said ‘In this cruel and imperfect world Audrey was living proof that God could still create perfection.’ |