Audrey Hepburn Biography
Audrey Hepburn (born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Audrey Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century. Redefining glamour with "elfin" features and a gamine waif-like figure that inspired designs by Hubert de Givenchy, Audrey Hepburn was inducted in the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame, and ranked, by the American Film Institute, as the third greatest female screen legend in the history of American cinema.
Born in Ixelles, a suburb of Brussels, Audrey Hepburn spent her childhood between Belgium, England and the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem during the Second World War. In Arnhem, she studied ballet before moving to London in 1948 where she continued to train in ballet and performed as a chorus girl in various West End musical theatre productions. After appearing in several British films and starring in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi, Hepburn gained instant Hollywood stardom for playing the Academy Award-winning lead role in Roman Holiday (1953). Later performing in Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Charade (1963), My Fair Lady (1964) and Wait Until Dark (1967), Hepburn became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age who received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations and accrued a Tony Award for her theatrical performance in the 1954 Broadway play Ondine. Hepburn remains one of few entertainers who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.
Although Audrey Hepburn appeared in fewer films as her life went on, Hepburn devoted much of her later life to UNICEF. Her war-time struggles inspired her passion for humanitarian work and, although Hepburn had contributed to the organisation since the 1950s, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia in the late eighties and early nineties. In 1992, Hepburn was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador but died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Switzerland, aged 63, in 1993.
Early life
An only child, Audrey Hepburn was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston on 4 May 1929 on Rue Keyenveld in Ixelles, a municipality in Brussels in Belgium. Her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889–1980), a Bohemia-born British man of Irish, French, English, and Austrian descent, had a career in finance and later double-barrelled the surname to Hepburn-Ruston in tribute to the family name that had recently died out, and in desire to find one that was suitably posh. He believed that his grandmother was a descendant of James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell and third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. He was first married to Cornelia Bisschop, a heiress he met in the Dutch West Indies.
Her mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra (1900–1984), was a Dutch aristocrat and the daughter of Aarnoud van Heemstra, who had been mayor of Arnhem from 1910 to 1920 and had served as Governor of Suriname from 1921 to 1928. She first married the knight Gustaaf Adolf Quarles Hendric Van Ufford at 19 but they divorced in 1925. Audrey Hepburn has two half-brothers from this marriage: Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford (1920–1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (1924–2010).
Ruston, who worked fitfully as director of the Brussels branch of the Bank of England, married van Heemstra in Batavia in 1926 before moving to Ixelles. Three years later, Hepburn was born, but in 1931, the family moved to Linkebeek, a nearby Brussels municipality. Although born in Belgium, Hepburn had British citizenship and, because of her father's job with a British insurance company, the family often travelled between Belgium, England, and the Netherlands. Although mindful of the needs of her father's trade, Hepburn was a playful and imaginative child who was nicknamed "Monkey Puzzle" by her father. She discovered a passion for ballet by the age of 5 and loved to read. With English, Irish, Dutch and Belgian origins, she had an instinctive talent for languages and went on to speak fluent English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian.
Childhood and adolescence in World War II
Members of the British Union of Fascists in the mid-1930s, Audrey Hepburn's parents divorced in 1935 when her father, who became a Nazi sympathiser, left the family. Years later, Hepburn would locate him in Dublin through the Red Cross. Although he remained emotionally detached, his daughter remained in contact and supported him financially until his death.
From 1935 to 1939, Audrey Hepburn was educated at Miss Rigden's School, an independent girls' school in the village of Elham in southeastern England. In 1939, her mother relocated her and her two half-brothers to their maternal grandfather's home in Arnhem, in the belief that the Netherlands would protect them from German attack. Whilst there, Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945 where, in addition to the standard school curriculum, she trained in ballet. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, a derivative of her mother's name Ella, modifying her mother's documents because an "English sounding" name was considered dangerous during the German occupation. Her mother also felt that the name Audrey may have indicated her British roots too strongly: an unwanted asset that could have attracted the attention of occupying German forces and resulted in confinement or deportation as with her half-brother, Ian van Ufford, who spent time in a German labour camp. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed acute anæmia, respiratory problems, and œdema. Audrey Hepburn , in a retrospective interview, commented, "I have memories. 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 to the train. I was a child observing a child."
Notwithstanding such strife, by 1944, Audrey Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She had secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance. "The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performances," she remarked. After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse and Arnhem was subsequently devastated by Allied artillery fire under Operation Market Garden. During the Dutch famine that followed in the winter of 1944, the Germans had blocked the resupply routes of the Netherlands' already-limited food and fuel supplies as retaliation for railway strikes that were held to hinder German occupation. People starved and froze to death in the streets; Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits. One way that Hepburn passed the time was by drawing; some of her childhood artwork can be seen today. When the country was liberated, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration trucks followed. Hepburn said in an interview that she fell ill from putting too much sugar in her oatmeal and eating an entire can of condensed milk. Hepburn's war-time experiences sparked her devotion to UNICEF, an international humanitarian organisation, in her later career.
Breakfast at Tiffany's and continued stardom
Three months after the birth of her son, Sean, in 1960, Audrey Hepburn began work on Blake Edwards' Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), a film very loosely based on the Truman Capote novella. The film was drastically changed from the original version. Capote disapproved of many changes and proclaimed that Hepburn was "grossly miscast" as Holly Golightly, a quirky New York call girl,a role he had envisioned for Marilyn Monroe. Hepburn's portrayal of Golightly was adapted from the original: "I can't play a hooker," she admitted to Marty Jurow, co-producer of the film. Despite the lack of sexual innuendo in her character, her portrayal was nominated for the 1962 Academy Award for Best Actress and became an iconic character in American cinema. Often considered her defining role, Holly Golightly, Hepburn's high fashion style and sophistication within the film became synonymous with her. She named the role "the jazziest of my career" yet admitted that, "I'm an introvert. Playing the extroverted girl was the hardest thing I ever did." The little black dress which is worn by Hepburn in the beginning of the film is cited as one of the most iconic items of clothing in the history of the twentieth century and perhaps the most famous little black dress of all time.
Playing opposite Shirley MacLaine and James Garner, her next role was in William Wyler's lesbian-themed drama The Children's Hour (1961) which saw Hepburn and MacLaine play teachers whose lives become troubled after a student accuses them of being lesbians. The film was one of Hollywood's earliest treatments of the subject of lesbianism, and perhaps due to this and the illiberal state of society, the film and Hepburn's performance went seemingly unnoticed both critically and commercially. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, however, noted that "it is not too well acted" with the exception of Hepburn who "gives the impression of being sensitive and pure" of its "muted theme" while Variety magazine also complimented Hepburn's "soft sensitivity, marvellous projection and emotional understatement" adding that Hepburn and MacLaine "beautifully complement each other."
Her only film with Cary Grant came in the comic thriller Charade (1963). Hepburn, who plays Regina Lampert, finds herself pursued by several men (including Grant) who chase the fortune her murdered husband had stolen. The role earned her third and final competitive BAFTA Award and accrued another Golden Globe nomination. Grant (59 years old at the time), who had previously withdrawn from the starring male lead roles in Roman Holiday and Sabrina, was sensitive about the age difference between Hepburn (at age 34) and him, making him uncomfortable about the romantic interplay. To satisfy his concerns, the filmmakers agreed to change the screenplay so that Hepburn's character would be the one to romantically pursue his. Grant, however, loved to humour Hepburn and once said, "All I want for Christmas is another picture with Audrey Hepburn."
Paris When It Sizzles (1964) reteamed Hepburn with William Holden nearly ten years after Sabrina. The screwball comedy set in Paris saw Hepburn as Gabrielle Simpson, the young assistant of a Hollywood screenwriter (Holden) who aids his writer's block by acting out his fantasies of possible plots. The film, called "marshmallow-weight hokum", was "uniformly panned"; Behind the scenes, the set was plagued with problems: Holden tried, without success, to rekindle a romance with the now-married actress; that, combined with his alcoholism made the situation a challenge. Hepburn did not help matters: after principal photography began, she demanded the dismissal of cinematographer Claude Renoir after seeing what she felt were unflattering dailies. Superstitious, she insisted on dressing room 55 because that was her lucky number (she had dressing room 55 for Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s). She insisted that Givenchy, her long-time designer, be given a credit in the film for her perfume.
"Not since Gone with the Wind has a motion picture created such universal excitement as My Fair Lady," wrote Soundstage magazine in 1964, yet Hepburn's landing the role of Eliza Doolittle in the 1964 George Cukor film adaptation of the stage musical sparked controversy. Firstly, by producer Jack Warner, the decision had been made to cast someone other than Julie Andrews, who had originated the role on Broadway, for fear that Andrews's then-limited film experience would prevent the film's success. Initially refusing, Hepburn asked Warner to give it to Andrews, but when informed that it was either her or Elizabeth Taylor who would receive the part, she accepted the role. Secondly, the casting of Hepburn, a non-singer, in a major musical created further friction. Deemed below par, Hepburn's originally recorded vocals were replaced with those of Marni Nixon. Upset, she reportedly stormed off the set, yet returned early the next day to apologise for her "wicked" behaviour. In the finished film, Hepburn's only singing vocals remain in one line in the song "I Could Have Danced All Night," on a section of the song "Just You Wait" and in the entirety of its reprise. Footage of several songs with Hepburn's original vocals still exist and have been included in documentaries and the recent releases of the film, yet only Nixon's renditions have been released on LP and CD. When asked about the dubbing of an actress with such distinctive vocal tones, Hepburn frowned and said, "You could tell, couldn't you? And there was Rex, recording all his songs as he acted ... next time —" She bit her lip to prevent her saying more. The controversy reached its height during the 1964–65 Academy Awards season, when despite the film's accumulation of eight out of a possible twelve awards, Hepburn was left nomination-less in the Best Actress category while Andrews was nominated for Mary Poppins (1964), and won it. The media tried to play up a rivalry between the two actresses, even though both women denied any such bad feelings existed and got along well. Despite such strife, many critics greatly applauded Hepburn's performance. "The happiest thing about My Fair Lady," wrote Bosley Crowther in The New York Times "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." Although initially feeling that she was badly miscast, her co-star Rex Harrison, as Higgins, also called Hepburn his favourite leading lady.
In the heist comedy How to Steal a Million (1966), she played Nicole, the daughter of a famous art collector whose collection consists entirely of forgeries. Fearing her father's exposure, Nicole sets out to steal one of his priceless statues with the help of Simon Dermott (Peter O'Toole). In 1967, she starred in two films: Two for the Road and Wait Until Dark. The former, a non-linear and innovative British comedy drama, traces the course of a troubled marriage. Director Stanley Donen said that Hepburn was more free and happy than he had ever seen her, and he credited that to Albert Finney. The latter was an edgy thriller in which Hepburn demonstrated her acting range by playing the part of a terrorised blind woman. It was a difficult film, but despite its being produced by Mel Ferrer, filmed on the brink of their divorce, and losing fifteen pounds under the stress, Audrey Hepburn earned a fifth Academy Award nomination. On the bright side, she found co-star Richard Crenna to be very funny, and she had a lot to laugh about with director Terence Young. They both joked that he had shelled his favourite star twenty-three years before; he had been a British Army tank commander during the Battle of Arnhem.
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| Audrey Hepburn |
Although Audrey Hepburn appeared in fewer films as her life went on, Hepburn devoted much of her later life to UNICEF. Her war-time struggles inspired her passion for humanitarian work and, although Hepburn had contributed to the organisation since the 1950s, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia in the late eighties and early nineties. In 1992, Hepburn was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador but died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Switzerland, aged 63, in 1993.
Early life
An only child, Audrey Hepburn was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston on 4 May 1929 on Rue Keyenveld in Ixelles, a municipality in Brussels in Belgium. Her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889–1980), a Bohemia-born British man of Irish, French, English, and Austrian descent, had a career in finance and later double-barrelled the surname to Hepburn-Ruston in tribute to the family name that had recently died out, and in desire to find one that was suitably posh. He believed that his grandmother was a descendant of James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell and third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. He was first married to Cornelia Bisschop, a heiress he met in the Dutch West Indies.
Her mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra (1900–1984), was a Dutch aristocrat and the daughter of Aarnoud van Heemstra, who had been mayor of Arnhem from 1910 to 1920 and had served as Governor of Suriname from 1921 to 1928. She first married the knight Gustaaf Adolf Quarles Hendric Van Ufford at 19 but they divorced in 1925. Audrey Hepburn has two half-brothers from this marriage: Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford (1920–1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (1924–2010).
Ruston, who worked fitfully as director of the Brussels branch of the Bank of England, married van Heemstra in Batavia in 1926 before moving to Ixelles. Three years later, Hepburn was born, but in 1931, the family moved to Linkebeek, a nearby Brussels municipality. Although born in Belgium, Hepburn had British citizenship and, because of her father's job with a British insurance company, the family often travelled between Belgium, England, and the Netherlands. Although mindful of the needs of her father's trade, Hepburn was a playful and imaginative child who was nicknamed "Monkey Puzzle" by her father. She discovered a passion for ballet by the age of 5 and loved to read. With English, Irish, Dutch and Belgian origins, she had an instinctive talent for languages and went on to speak fluent English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian.
Childhood and adolescence in World War II
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| Audrey Hepburn |
From 1935 to 1939, Audrey Hepburn was educated at Miss Rigden's School, an independent girls' school in the village of Elham in southeastern England. In 1939, her mother relocated her and her two half-brothers to their maternal grandfather's home in Arnhem, in the belief that the Netherlands would protect them from German attack. Whilst there, Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945 where, in addition to the standard school curriculum, she trained in ballet. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, a derivative of her mother's name Ella, modifying her mother's documents because an "English sounding" name was considered dangerous during the German occupation. Her mother also felt that the name Audrey may have indicated her British roots too strongly: an unwanted asset that could have attracted the attention of occupying German forces and resulted in confinement or deportation as with her half-brother, Ian van Ufford, who spent time in a German labour camp. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed acute anæmia, respiratory problems, and œdema. Audrey Hepburn , in a retrospective interview, commented, "I have memories. 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 to the train. I was a child observing a child."
Notwithstanding such strife, by 1944, Audrey Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She had secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance. "The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performances," she remarked. After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse and Arnhem was subsequently devastated by Allied artillery fire under Operation Market Garden. During the Dutch famine that followed in the winter of 1944, the Germans had blocked the resupply routes of the Netherlands' already-limited food and fuel supplies as retaliation for railway strikes that were held to hinder German occupation. People starved and froze to death in the streets; Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits. One way that Hepburn passed the time was by drawing; some of her childhood artwork can be seen today. When the country was liberated, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration trucks followed. Hepburn said in an interview that she fell ill from putting too much sugar in her oatmeal and eating an entire can of condensed milk. Hepburn's war-time experiences sparked her devotion to UNICEF, an international humanitarian organisation, in her later career.
Breakfast at Tiffany's and continued stardom
Three months after the birth of her son, Sean, in 1960, Audrey Hepburn began work on Blake Edwards' Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), a film very loosely based on the Truman Capote novella. The film was drastically changed from the original version. Capote disapproved of many changes and proclaimed that Hepburn was "grossly miscast" as Holly Golightly, a quirky New York call girl,a role he had envisioned for Marilyn Monroe. Hepburn's portrayal of Golightly was adapted from the original: "I can't play a hooker," she admitted to Marty Jurow, co-producer of the film. Despite the lack of sexual innuendo in her character, her portrayal was nominated for the 1962 Academy Award for Best Actress and became an iconic character in American cinema. Often considered her defining role, Holly Golightly, Hepburn's high fashion style and sophistication within the film became synonymous with her. She named the role "the jazziest of my career" yet admitted that, "I'm an introvert. Playing the extroverted girl was the hardest thing I ever did." The little black dress which is worn by Hepburn in the beginning of the film is cited as one of the most iconic items of clothing in the history of the twentieth century and perhaps the most famous little black dress of all time.
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| Audrey Hepburn |
Her only film with Cary Grant came in the comic thriller Charade (1963). Hepburn, who plays Regina Lampert, finds herself pursued by several men (including Grant) who chase the fortune her murdered husband had stolen. The role earned her third and final competitive BAFTA Award and accrued another Golden Globe nomination. Grant (59 years old at the time), who had previously withdrawn from the starring male lead roles in Roman Holiday and Sabrina, was sensitive about the age difference between Hepburn (at age 34) and him, making him uncomfortable about the romantic interplay. To satisfy his concerns, the filmmakers agreed to change the screenplay so that Hepburn's character would be the one to romantically pursue his. Grant, however, loved to humour Hepburn and once said, "All I want for Christmas is another picture with Audrey Hepburn."
Paris When It Sizzles (1964) reteamed Hepburn with William Holden nearly ten years after Sabrina. The screwball comedy set in Paris saw Hepburn as Gabrielle Simpson, the young assistant of a Hollywood screenwriter (Holden) who aids his writer's block by acting out his fantasies of possible plots. The film, called "marshmallow-weight hokum", was "uniformly panned"; Behind the scenes, the set was plagued with problems: Holden tried, without success, to rekindle a romance with the now-married actress; that, combined with his alcoholism made the situation a challenge. Hepburn did not help matters: after principal photography began, she demanded the dismissal of cinematographer Claude Renoir after seeing what she felt were unflattering dailies. Superstitious, she insisted on dressing room 55 because that was her lucky number (she had dressing room 55 for Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s). She insisted that Givenchy, her long-time designer, be given a credit in the film for her perfume.
"Not since Gone with the Wind has a motion picture created such universal excitement as My Fair Lady," wrote Soundstage magazine in 1964, yet Hepburn's landing the role of Eliza Doolittle in the 1964 George Cukor film adaptation of the stage musical sparked controversy. Firstly, by producer Jack Warner, the decision had been made to cast someone other than Julie Andrews, who had originated the role on Broadway, for fear that Andrews's then-limited film experience would prevent the film's success. Initially refusing, Hepburn asked Warner to give it to Andrews, but when informed that it was either her or Elizabeth Taylor who would receive the part, she accepted the role. Secondly, the casting of Hepburn, a non-singer, in a major musical created further friction. Deemed below par, Hepburn's originally recorded vocals were replaced with those of Marni Nixon. Upset, she reportedly stormed off the set, yet returned early the next day to apologise for her "wicked" behaviour. In the finished film, Hepburn's only singing vocals remain in one line in the song "I Could Have Danced All Night," on a section of the song "Just You Wait" and in the entirety of its reprise. Footage of several songs with Hepburn's original vocals still exist and have been included in documentaries and the recent releases of the film, yet only Nixon's renditions have been released on LP and CD. When asked about the dubbing of an actress with such distinctive vocal tones, Hepburn frowned and said, "You could tell, couldn't you? And there was Rex, recording all his songs as he acted ... next time —" She bit her lip to prevent her saying more. The controversy reached its height during the 1964–65 Academy Awards season, when despite the film's accumulation of eight out of a possible twelve awards, Hepburn was left nomination-less in the Best Actress category while Andrews was nominated for Mary Poppins (1964), and won it. The media tried to play up a rivalry between the two actresses, even though both women denied any such bad feelings existed and got along well. Despite such strife, many critics greatly applauded Hepburn's performance. "The happiest thing about My Fair Lady," wrote Bosley Crowther in The New York Times "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." Although initially feeling that she was badly miscast, her co-star Rex Harrison, as Higgins, also called Hepburn his favourite leading lady.
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| Audrey Hepburn |
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