HEPBURN, Audrey

(b. 4 May 1929 in Brussels, Belgium; d. 20 January 1993 in Tolochenaz, Switzerland), award-winning screen and stage star whose graceful beauty and Givenchy-inspired elegance created a distinctive 1960s style that made her one of the most admired and imitated women of her generation.

Hepburn, born Audrey Kathleen Ruston and baptized Edda Van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston, was the only child of Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, an Anglo-Irish banker and importer, and Ella van Heemstra, a baroness whose family had long-standing ties to the Dutch throne. She was born in the third year of their brief and volatile marriage. Van Heemstra's two sons from a previous marriage became Hepburn's playmates. Her parents became active fascists in Belgium and England, where the family spent its time. When her parents separated in 1935, Hepburn was sent to a boarding school in Kent, where she suffered from migraine headaches and a feeling of abandonment.

When World War II broke out in Europe, Hepburn was evacuated into Arnhem, in what was then neutral Holland, where she lived with her mother and half-brothers. One day after her eleventh birthday, the German army occupied Arnhem and the rest of Holland. One brother was sent to a forced labor camp, and the other went into the German army. During the war Hepburn took dancing lessons at the Arnhem Conservatory of Music and gave performances in people's basements to raise money for the Dutch resistance. She also carried messages in her shoes to resistance leaders. Hepburn's home was reduced to rubble on 17 September 1944, when the Nazis beat back an Allied offensive, forcing evacuation of the entire town. That winter Hepburn and her mother survived on tulip bulbs and grass pies. Hepburn suffered from jaundice and edema and became anemic and asthmatic. One day after her sixteenth birthday, the Germans surrendered, and food and emergency supplies sent by the United Nations reached the Rustons and other refugees.

After the war Hepburn studied dance with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam. Hepburn's first film work was as a KLM flight attendant in a thirty-nine-minute travelogue calledNederlands in 7 Lessen (1948). A bigger break was a scholarship to Marie Rambert's ballet school in London.

"Audrey Hepburn," as she was now billed, proved to be "a good worker and wonderful learner," but "too tall" at five feet, seven inches, and years behind in her training. Hepburn was devastated. She took modeling jobs and appeared in the chorus line of several West End productions, including High Button Shoes (1949), for eight pounds a week. Her almond eyes and long-legged good looks impressed impresario Cecil Landeau, who cast her in the musical-comedy revue Sauce Tartare in 1949 and Sauce Piquante in the spring of 1950.

Hepburn had bit and supporting roles in several British film comedies in 1951, including One Wild Oat, Young Wives Tale, Laughter in Paradise, and The Lavender Hill Mob. She was also given the second lead in The Secret People and, during its filming, was briefly engaged to the trucking magnate James Hanson. Hepburn traveled to the French Riviera in the summer of 1951 to film the forgettable Monte Carlo Baby. There she met the French novelist Colette, who gave her the lead role of the French courtesan in Gigi. The play opened in New York City's Fulton Theater on 24 November 1951, and Hepburn's reviews were even better than those of the play. One week later Hepburn's name went up on the theater marquee.

Hepburn played a princess opposite Gregory Peck in William Wyler's Roman Holiday in 1953, beguiling costars, critics, and audiences alike with her cinematic innocence and sophistication. Her slender elegance and graceful charm celebrated "the spirit of youth" and seemed an antidote to the pessimism of the postwar world. The film was a huge hit, and Hepburn received an Academy Award for best actress for her first major dramatic role.

Days after winning her Oscar, Hepburn received a Tony Award for her performance as a water sprite opposite Mel Ferrer's knight in the play Ondine. The couple married in Burgenstock, Switzerland, on 25 September 1954. By that time Hepburn had completed shooting Sabrina, opposite Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, a film that would win her another Oscar nomination and confirm her super-star status. The usually irascible director Billy Wilder thought Hepburn had "a special quality that every star needs." She made the Cinderella story of a chauffeur's daughter "look so unforced, so simple, so easy." The metamorphosis was greatly aided by the Paris couturier Hubert de Givenchy's bare-shouldered ball gown of white organdy that delicately feminized Hepburn's spare figure. The look served as an antidote to the lush sexuality of the "blonde bomb-shell" look then being popularized by Marilyn Monroe.

Wilder and Hepburn would collaborate again with Love in the Afternoon (1957). By then Hepburn had appeared in War and Peace (1956), opposite Ferrer, and in Stanley Donen's Funny Face (1957), with Fred Astaire. The latter was warmly received and allowed Hepburn to show her skill as a dancer. Richard Avedon's photography and Givenchy's gorgeous outfits made a lasting impression. The scene of Hepburn in a strapless red evening gown unfurling a red shawl behind her as she runs down a white marble staircase best captured the image of Hepburn as a fantasy nymph.

Hepburn entered the 1960s as the screen's most popular actress. Green Mansions (1959), directed by Ferrer, had done little to advance the career of either, but The Nun's Story (1959), directed by Fred Zinnemann on location in the Belgian Congo, became a personal favorite and made more money than any previous Warner Brothers release. The film reflected a new realism in Hepburn's movie roles. Critics found her performance of Sister Luke so subtly rich and suggestive that it required a second and third viewing to capture completely. The performance merited her third Oscar nomination in six films and won best actress honors from New York film critics and the British Film Academy.

The 1960s started with Hepburn's happiest role. After three miscarriages, her son Sean was born on 17 September 1960 in Lucerne, Switzerland. For nine months she staunchly turned aside all offers, including the part of Maria in West Side Story. John Huston's critically acclaimed The Unforgiven (1959) was released during this interval, with Hepburn playing the part of the foundling daughter of a frontier family. Few films better capture big city chic than Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), based on Truman Capote's sardonic summary of life among New York's glitter-ati. Hepburn's character, Holly Golightly, is in on the self-deception. Her swinging parties where sex mixes easily with sophistication are really a pretense, as she chases after South American millionaires and makes most of her money as a call girl. Later in the film, viewers learn she is really an acutely vulnerable backwoods girl named Lulamae Barnes with a much older husband. George Peppard plays a struggling writer suffering from a long dry spell who is fascinated and repelled by his intriguing neighbor. The outcome is a thoroughly modern romantic comedy of characters who struggle over uncertainty and personal identity. The performance is one of the most memorable of Hepburn's career and the decade and won her a fourth Academy Award nomination.

The film's award-winning score by Henry Mancini had Hepburn singing Johnny Mercer's lyrics to "Moon River." Its evocation of lost innocence and dreamlike hope made it the most recorded song of the decade. Long lasting too was the look Givenchy gave Hepburn for the film. Holly's oversized dark glasses and black evening gown, with long gloves topped by a rhinestone tiara in her upswept hair, became a 1960s standard of sophistication. Director Blake Edwards quickly discovered "the camera loved her." Hepburn said the excitement had to be generated "from the inside out." That was why "understanding" a character was her way of "re-creating" her. In Holly's case this meant "looking back to my days in London as I was starting out, hoping someone would notice me."

It was now impossible for Hepburn to go unnoticed. She was a reluctant interviewee, making her all the more attractive to fans starved for celebrity. The reclusive star was stalked by tabloid photographers and often retreated to her Burgenstock chalet to tend her gardens and raise her son. The Children's Hour (1961) reunited her with William Wyler, and Paris When It Sizzles (1962) returned her to the arms of William Holden. Her following film, Charade (1963), directed by Stanley Donen and costarring Cary Grant, became a huge hit. This homage to Alfred Hitchcock, set in Paris to a Henry Mancini score, has the two stars chased by a trio of sinister crooks in a polished piece of implausibility that delighted audiences and entertained the critics. Hepburn's salary was now $750,000 and a percentage of the picture's profits.

The role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1964) was one of the few parts Hepburn actually campaigned for. She loved the story of a cockney flower girl who is transformed into a gentlewoman by Professor Henry Higgins because of the character's "attractive vulnerability" and "beautiful inner strength." With $17 million staked on the film's success, Jack L. Warner snubbed Julie Andrews, who originated the part on Broadway, and sought a bankable leading lady to play opposite Rex Harrison. Hepburn was signed for a salary of $1.1 million.

The long-awaited film, directed by George Cukor, was a critical and box-office triumph, even though Hepburn's notices were uncharacteristically mixed. She had spent five weeks in rehearsal, planning to sing the songs Andrews had made so famous—"Wouldn't It Be Loverly," "Just You Wait," "The Rain in Spain," and "I Could Have Danced All Night," but at the last minute studio officials insisted the songs be dubbed by vocal understudy Marni Nixon. Hepburn, whose voice was pleasant if unspectacular, proceeded professionally. Trade papers made much of the film's eight Academy Awards and Hepburn's failure to even be nominated in the year that Andrews won an Oscar in her screen debut in M ary Poppins.

The Ferrers settled far away from Hollywood in an old country farmhouse in Tolochenaz, Switzerland, above Lake Geneva, which Hepburn christened "La Paisible" (the Peaceful). She worked only when she wanted to—with Wyler again in How to Steal a Million (1966), costar-ring Peter O'Toole, and Two for the Road (1967), directed by Donen and costarring Albert Finney. Hepburn and Finney portrayed a couple on the eve of divorce, paralleling the breakup of Hepburn's own marriage. Ferrer produced the highly successful Wait Until Dark (1967), in which Hepburn plays a blind woman terrorized by narcotic smugglers. The star's fifth Oscar nomination only deepened the impression that the proud Ferrer lived in his wife's considerable shadow. Hepburn wanted to work less, but Ferrer was filled with ambition for himself and his wife. Their separation was amicable and their divorce final on 5 December 1968. One month later, on 18 January 1969, Hepburn abruptly married Andrea Dotti, an outgoing Italian psychiatrist she had first met while filming Roman Holiday. Their son Luca was born on 8 February 1970.

Hepburn "withdrew from pictures to take care of my boys." For nine years she stayed off the screen, turning down offers to star in Forty Carats, Nicholas and Alexandra, The Turning Point, and other projects. She later admitted, "I would have liked to have made a few more movies, but I hate to think what I would have felt if I hadn't known my children." Hepburn came out of retirement to make Robin and Marian (1976) for her family. Hepburn's return to the screen created a good deal more excitement than the film. Even that, however, diminished with successive films—Bloodline (1979) and They All Laughed (1981)—pale imitations of Hepburn's previous work.

Hepburn had long been separated from Dotti, and in 1982 their divorce was finalized. She hosted a cable series "Gardens of the World," and appeared in only two features—Love Among Thieves, a 1987 television movie for the American Broadcasting Company, and Steven Spielberg's Always (1989), in which she had two brief scenes as a guardian angel. Hepburn, often accompanied by Dutch companion Robert Wolders, began traveling the world on behalf of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), speaking out for needy children and drawing attention to the plight of Third World families wracked by war, famine, and disease. As a goodwill ambassador she made hundreds of speeches, raising millions of relief dollars. Her last trip to drought-stricken Somalia in September 1992 publicized international famine relief efforts. Her impassioned plea for "collective responsibility" earned her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 from President George H. W. Bush, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, posthumously presented in 1993 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Hepburn died at the age of sixty-three from colon cancer. She is buried in Tolochenaz. The American Film Institute listed Hepburn behind only Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis among significant actresses during the first century of filmmaking. At the height of her career she had made only sixteen films in thirteen years, but their impact was so stunning that she set a standard for substance and style that women have imitated ever since.

A summary of the literature on Hepburn is in David Hofstede, Audrey Hepburn: A Bio-Bibliography (1994). Major biographies include Charles Higham, Audrey: The Life of Audrey Hepburn (1984); Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn (1984); Robyn Karney, Audrey Hepburn: A Star Danced (1993); Diana Maychick, Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (1993); Warren G. Harris, Audrey Hepburn: A Biography (1994); Alexander Walker, Audrey: Her Real Story (1995); and Barry Paris, Audrey Hepburn (1996). Hepburn's screen career is carefully chronicled in Caroline Latham, Audrey Hepburn (1984); and Jerry Vermilye, The Complete Films of Audrey Hepburn (1995). Hepburn's impact on the fashion of the 1960s is in Pamela Clarke Keogh, Audrey Style: The Subtle Art of Elegance (1999). A pictured presentation of her life is in Carol Krenz, Audrey: A Life in Pictures (1997). Also see Gene Ringgold, "Audrey Hepburn," Films in Review (Dec. 1971): 585–601. Obituaries are in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free-Press, and Los Angeles Times (all 21 Jan. 1993); People, Time, and Maclean's, (all 1 Feb. 1993); Entertainment Weekly (5 Feb. 1993); and Film Comment (Mar.–Apr. 1993). An appreciation by Sheridan Morley appears in the (London) Sunday Times (24 Jan. 1993). "Audrey Hepburn Remembered,"produced for the Public Broadcasting System in 1993, is a compilation of her infrequent broadcast and film interviews. Hepburn recounted her life and career in a Library of Congress series, "Reflections on the Silver Screen" (1990).

Bruce J. Evensen