There are many stars that have passed from our midst that continue to have a cult following and the one that most often comes to mind is Marilyn Monroe but if you do a little bit more study of those really interested in cinema you will find that the very alluring Audrey Hepburn has an epic fan base as well. Let’s take a deeper look at this very intriguing star that disappeared from our lives all too soon.
I take a quote from Time magazine in an article they wrote about Audrey’s life in 2007 in which they write she represented “emotional aristocracy”. And if you know anything about her life in and out of film you will no doubt agree because the characters she portrayed in film mirrored the Audrey people that knew her outside the celluloid life. In the definition of self-effacement Miss Hepburn’s picture is alongside the text. To some she was the most beautiful woman alive but you would never know it from her because her humility never became a cross she bore it just naturally became part of an aura and hence the brilliance of her stardom.
Born in Brussels and educated mostly in England to an aristocratic Dutch mother and Englishman businessman father during WWII her mother and Audrey were in the Netherlands when the Nazis invaded and executed her uncle and cousin and one of her brothers was interred in a labor camp. After the wars end Audrey began as a chorus girl and dancer and spotted by a French author Collette who recommended her for the part in her novel Gigi. So impressed by her performance when the play opened in New York in 1951 William Wyler wanted to screen test her for Roman Holiday. After filming her would remark, “That girl is going to be the biggest star in Hollywood.” Wyler must have seemed a soothsayer as Audrey would win the Oscar that year in which she played a princess who breaks away from her Royal entrapment while in Rome and falls in love with a journalist Gregory Peck. It was a great year for her in 1953 and after the movies release she would also win the Tony for Broadway’s Ondine.
Audrey remodeled the buxom blonde look into a lithesome figurine that often seemed just a little bit underweight for her frame. No one seemed to mind though, as her uncanny beauty was intoxicating sans the resulting hangover. She matched elegantly with leading men Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina 1954, Funny Face 1957 with Fred Astaire, Love in the Afternoon 1957 Gary Cooper, 1959’s A Nun’s Story followed by her delightfully free spirited Holly Golightly with George Peppard in 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s where her 4th Oscar nomination touched her. She was not without controversy however when she was awarded the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady in 1964 naturally destined for Julie Andrews who would have reprised the role from Broadway. Audrey was selected instead for the movie version and was splendiferous opposite Rex Harrison although Marni Nixon dubbed her singing.
In 1967 in a somewhat darker performance her 5th Academy Award nomination followed in Wait Until Dark wherein she played a blind heroine stuck in her apartment terrorized by some nefarious drug smugglers. Audrey retreated to Switzerland and made 3 more movies most notably Robin and Marian in 1976 paired with Sean Connery. Audrey married twice first to Mel Ferrer she bore him two sons and they divorced in 1968 and then married Andrea Dotti in 1969 an Italian psychiatrist and they had a son they later divorced and then her final relationship with a Dutch actor Robert Wolders in 1980.
In the final two decades of her life Audrey dedicated her life to UNICEF as an ambassador for the U.N.’s children’s fund where her travels spanned the globe. Audrey maintained her very thin physiology never wanting to appear to well fed to the starving children she met along the way. In 1992 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Audrey Hepburn died from cancer in 1993 at age 63. She continues on in our memories as one of Hollywood’s most beautiful and enduring stars.
