Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Kathleen Hepburn (née Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British[a] actress. Recognised as a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend from the Classical Hollywood cinema and was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List.
Audrey Hepburn
20 January 1993 (aged 63)
Tolochenaz Cemetery
British
- Actress
- humanitarian
1948–1989
Robert Wolders (1980–1993)
2, including Sean
- Ella van Heemstra (mother)
- Baron Aarnoud van Heemstra (maternal grandfather)
- Emma Ferrer (granddaughter)
Born into an aristocratic family in Ixelles, Brussels, Hepburn spent parts of her childhood in Belgium, England and the Netherlands. She attended boarding school in Kent, England from 1936 to 1939. With the outbreak of World War II, she returned to the Netherlands.[3] During the war, Hepburn studied ballet at the Arnhem Conservatory and by 1944, she performed ballet to raise money to support the Dutch resistance.[4] Hepburn studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam beginning in 1945 and with Marie Rambert in London from 1948. She began performing as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions and then had minor appearances in several films. Hepburn rose to stardom in the romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953) alongside Gregory Peck, for which she was the first actress to win an Oscar, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Award for a single performance. That year, she also won a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance in Ondine.
Hepburn went on to star in a number of successful films such as Sabrina (1954), in which Humphrey Bogart and William Holden compete for her affection; Funny Face (1957), a musical in which she sang her own parts; the drama The Nun's Story (1959); the romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961); the thriller-romance Charade (1963), opposite Cary Grant; and the musical My Fair Lady (1964). In 1967, she starred in the thriller Wait Until Dark, receiving Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. After that, Hepburn only occasionally appeared in films, one being Robin and Marian (1976) with Sean Connery. Her last recorded performances were in the 1990 documentary television series Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming. In 1994, Hepburn's contributions to a spoken-word recording titled Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales earned her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. She stands as one of few entertainers who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards.
Hepburn won three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role. In recognition of her film career, she received BAFTA's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award and the Special Tony Award. Later in life, Hepburn devoted much of her time to UNICEF, to which she had contributed since 1954. Between 1988 and 1992, she worked in some of the poorest communities of Africa, South America and Asia. In December 1992, Hepburn received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. A month later, she died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland at the age of 63.[5]
Entertainment career[edit]
1945–1952: Ballet studies and early acting roles[edit]
After the war ended in 1945, Hepburn moved with her mother and siblings to Amsterdam, where she began ballet training under Sonia Gaskell, a leading figure in Dutch ballet, and Russian teacher Olga Tarasova.[45] Due to the loss of the family fortune, Ella had to support them by working as a cook and housekeeper for a wealthy family.[46] Hepburn made her film debut playing an air stewardess in Dutch in Seven Lessons (1948), an educational travel film made by Charles van der Linden and Henry Josephson.[47]
Later that year, Hepburn moved to London after accepting a ballet scholarship with Ballet Rambert, which was then based in Notting Hill.[48][d] She supported herself with part-time work as a model, and dropped "Ruston" from her surname. After she was told by Rambert that despite her talent, her height and weak constitution (the after-effect of wartime malnutrition) would make the status of prima ballerina unattainable, she decided to concentrate on acting.[49][50][51] While Ella worked in menial jobs to support them, Hepburn appeared as a chorus girl[52] in the West End musical theatre revues High Button Shoes (1948) at the London Hippodrome, and Cecil Landeau's Sauce Tartare (1949) and Sauce Piquante (1950) at the Cambridge Theatre. Also, in 1950, she worked as a dancer in an exceptionally "ambitious" revue, Summer Nights, at Ciro's London, a prominent nightclub.[53]
During her theatrical work, she took elocution lessons with actor Felix Aylmer to develop her voice.[54] After being spotted by the Ealing Studios casting director, Margaret Harper-Nelson, while performing in Sauce Piquante, Hepburn was registered as a freelance actress with the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC). She appeared in the BBC Television play The Silent Village,[55] and in minor roles in the films One Wild Oat, Laughter in Paradise, Young Wives' Tale, and The Lavender Hill Mob (all 1951). She was cast in her first major supporting role in Thorold Dickinson's Secret People (1952), as a prodigious ballerina, performing all of her own dancing sequences.[56]
Hepburn then took a small role in a bilingual film, Monte Carlo Baby (French: Nous Irons à Monte Carlo, 1952), which was filmed in Monte Carlo. Coincidentally, French novelist Colette was at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo during the filming, and decided to cast Hepburn in the title role in the Broadway play Gigi.[57] Hepburn went into rehearsals having never spoken on stage, and required private coaching.[58] When Gigi opened at the Fulton Theatre on 24 November 1951, she received praise for her performance, despite criticism that the stage version was inferior to the French film adaptation.[59] Life called her a "hit",[59] while The New York Times stated that "her quality is so winning and so right that she is the success of the evening".[58] Hepburn also received a Theatre World Award for the role.[60] The play ran for 219 performances, closing on 31 May 1952,[60] before going on tour, which began 13 October 1952 in Pittsburgh and visited Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, D. C., and Los Angeles, before closing on 16 May 1953 in San Francisco.[10]
Personal life and final years[edit]
Multilingualism[edit]
Alongside her native English and Dutch, Hepburn also had some fluency in French (which she learned at school in Belgium), German, Italian and Spanish.[114] Throughout her life, Hepburn lived in many countries, including spending her childhood in Belgium, England and the Netherlands, and her adult years in the United States, Italy and Switzerland,[115] and traveled extensively during her later years of life as part of her humanitarian work with UNICEF.[116]