Audrey Hepburn
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Audrey Hepburn (4 May 1929 - 20 January 1993) was an iconic Academy Award-winning actress, fashion model and humanitarian.
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.
Hepburn's reputation was as 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.)
Life during World War Two
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 would locate her father and send him money and write him many letters). 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.[2]
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 Operation Market Garden. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed several health problems. She would stay in bed and read to take her mind off the hunger, and she danced ballet for groups of people to collect money for the underground movement. She resorted to digging up and eating tulip bulbs to survive the famine. The impact of these times would shape her life and values.
Rise to stardom
After the war, Hepburn and her mother moved to London, where she studied ballet, 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. 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, Hepburn answered without hesitation, Roman Holiday, because it was the one that made her a star.
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.
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 said, "all I want for Christmas is to make another movie with Audrey Hepburn;" and Gregory Peck became a lifelong friend. 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.
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, and Elizabeth Taylor reportedly lobbied for the part as well; however, Hepburn was awarded it by studio heads. 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".
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.) 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.
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
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 the American actor Mel Ferrer and to an Italian doctor, Andrea Dotti, and had a son to each husband?-Sean by Ferrer, and Luca 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 Audrey, 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; 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 Audrey had an affair with her handsome "Two For the Road" co-star Albert Finney. After the marriage fell apart, Audrey 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. Although Dotti loved Audrey and was well-liked by Sean, who called him "fun", Dotti had affairs with younger women. The marriage lasted 13 years and ended 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, Audrey began to feel pains in her stomach, which turned out to be a rare form of cancer that originated in the appendix. Audrey had surgery in a Los Angeles hospital, but the cancer continued to spread, and she apparently refused chemotherapy. Hepburn died of colorectal cancer on January 20, 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
* Dutch in Seven Lessons (1948) (documentary)
* Monte Carlo Baby (1951)
* Laughter in Paradise (1951)
* One Wild Oat (1951)
* The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)
* Young Wives' Tale (1951)
* The Secret People (1952)
* We Will Go to Monte Carlo (1952) (French version of Monte Carlo Baby)
* Roman Holiday (1953)
* Sabrina (1954)
* War and Peace (1956)
* Funny Face (1957)
* Love in the Afternoon (1957)
* Green Mansions (1959)
* The Nun's Story (1959)
* The Unforgiven (1960)
* Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
* The Children's Hour (1961)
* Charade (1963)
* Paris, When It Sizzles (1964)
* My Fair Lady (1964)
* How to Steal a Million (1966)
* Two for the Road (1967)
* Wait Until Dark (1967)
* Robin and Marian (1976)
* Bloodline (1979)
* They All Laughed (1981)
* Always (1989)
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).
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.
* Academy Award: Best Actress for Roman Holiday (1954) and posthumous The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (1993).
* Tony Award: Best Actress for Ondine (1954) and Special Achievement award (1968).
* Grammy Award: Best Spoken Word Album for Children (1993) for Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales (posthumous).
* Emmy Award: Outstanding Individual Achievement - Informational Programming (1993) for the "Flower Gardens" episode of her documentary series, Gardens of the World (posthumous).
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.
Trivia
* Audrey 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.
* Suffered several miscarriages in her lifetime which led to some depression. While filming The Unforgiven, Audrey 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.
* Audrey 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. After she was injured, she kept Ip (Pippin), a fawn, as a pet. Sean Ferrer had a Cocker Spaniel named Cokey. When Audrey 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'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 chose the last name Hepburn in honor of Katharine 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.
* 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).
* Audrey 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 Audrey Hepburn because the artist was in love with her charming looks.
* Everyone remembers when Marilyn Monroe serenaded President John F. Kennedy on his birthday in 1962. What is often forgotten is that Audrey Hepburn sang "Happy Birthday Mr. President" to JFK for his final birthday in 1963.
* According to Sean Ferrer, Audrey'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.
* Opera diva Maria Callas reportedly loved Hepburn's look so much that she adopted it for herself in the 1950s.
Charade Lyrics
Andy Williams Save up to 30%
Charade
Artist: Andy Williams (peak Billboard position # 100 in 1964)
Words by Johnny Mercer and Music by Henry Mancini
from the 1963 film "Charade" starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn
When we played our charade
We were like children posing
Playing at games, acting out names
Guessing the parts we played
Oh what a hit we made
We came on next to closing
Best on the bill, lovers until
Love left the masquerade
Fate seemed to pull the strings
I turned and you were gone
While from the darkened wings
The music box played on
Sad little serenade
Song of my heart's composing
I hear it still, I always will
Best on the bill
Charade
Transcribed by Ronald E. Hontz
[email protected]
