Audrey Hepburn British Actress (1929–1993)

Early life

Audrey Hepburn was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston on 4 May 1929 in Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels, Belgium. Her mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra, was a Dutch noblewoman, and her father, Joseph Ruston, was a British subject who later adopted the surname Hepburn-Ruston. Her childhood was spent moving between Belgium, England and the Netherlands. After her father left the family in 1935, she was sent to a small private school in Kent, and her parents divorced soon afterward.

When war broke out in 1939 her mother brought her back to Arnhem, where she studied ballet at the conservatory. During the German occupation she used the name Edda van Heemstra, since an English-sounding name was considered risky. She gave dance performances to raise money for the Dutch resistance, and the last winter of the war brought severe food shortages that left her in poor condition. After 1945 she trained in Amsterdam under Sonia Gaskell and then in London with Marie Rambert, but was told that her height and build would limit her chances of becoming a leading ballerina, and she turned to acting.

Career

In London she worked as a model and a chorus girl in West End revues. Her first screen credit was a small part in the Dutch travel film Dutch in Seven Lessons (1948), followed by minor roles in several British films in 1951, including The Lavender Hill Mob, and a larger supporting part in Secret People (1952). The novelist Colette chose her for the title role of the Broadway play Gigi, which opened in November 1951 and earned her a Theatre World Award.

Her first starring film role was Princess Ann in Roman Holiday (1953), opposite Gregory Peck. It brought her the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. She also won a Tony Award for the Broadway play Ondine. Further leading roles followed: Sabrina (1954), War and Peace (1956), in which she played Natasha Rostova, the musical Funny Face (1957) with Fred Astaire, and The Nun's Story (1959). As Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) she played one of her best-known parts. She worked with Cary Grant in Charade (1963), played Eliza Doolittle in the musical My Fair Lady (1964), and appeared in How to Steal a Million (1966), Two for the Road (1967) and the thriller Wait Until Dark (1967).

After 1967 she chose to act only occasionally. She returned as Maid Marian in Robin and Marian (1976), opposite Sean Connery, and later appeared in Bloodline (1979) and They All Laughed (1981). Her last film role was a short appearance as an angel in Steven Spielberg's Always (1989). She then hosted the television series Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn.

Public roles

Hepburn worked for UNICEF for many years and served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the organization. In her later years she made field visits to Ethiopia, Turkey, Venezuela, Ecuador, Central America, Sudan, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Somalia, often to support immunization, food relief and clean-water programs.

Recognition

Hepburn received five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress, for Roman Holiday, Sabrina, The Nun's Story, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Wait Until Dark, and won once. She earned three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role, and received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, a Special Tony Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Posthumously, she won a Primetime Emmy Award for the Gardens of the World series and a Grammy Award for the spoken-word children's recording Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales, which makes her one of the few performers to have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards.

For her humanitarian work she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 and, after her passing, the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Personal life

Hepburn married the actor Mel Ferrer on 25 September 1954 in Switzerland. The couple divorced in 1968. In 1960 she settled in Switzerland and later bought a country house in the village of Tolochenaz. Their son is Sean Hepburn Ferrer. In 1969 she married the Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, and their son is Luca Dotti. That marriage ended in 1982. From 1980 she lived with the Dutch actor Robert Wolders.

Audrey Hepburn died on 20 January 1993 at her home in Tolochenaz.