Audrey Hepburn

NAME Audrey Kathleen Ruston, later known as Audrey Hepburn. She began calling herself Audrey Hepburn in 1948, adopting the surname her father had added to his own.

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Internationally celebrated actress, fashion icon, humanitarian, and one of only fourteen EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony).

BIRTH She was born on May 4, 1929, at 48 Rue Keyenveld in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium.

FAMILY BACKGROUND Hepburn was the only child of Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, an English banker of Irish descent, and Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat.  

A former honorary British consul in the Dutch East Indies, her father had previously been married to Dutch heiress Cornelia Bisschop. Her mother was the daughter of Baron Aarnoud van Heemstra, mayor of Arnhem (1910–1920) and Governor of Dutch Suriname (1921–1928). (1)

She had two half-brothers, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford, from her mother’s first marriage. 

Her parents were members of the British Union of Fascists in the mid-1930s, a fact that later caused Hepburn significant shame and was kept hidden from the press. Her mother wrote admiring articles about Hitler before later rejecting such views during wartime.

Her father abandoned the family in 1935 when Audrey was six, an event she described as the most traumatic of her life.

CHILDHOOD Her childhood was spent moving between Belgium, England, and the Netherlands.

 During World War II, she lived in Arnhem, Netherlands, where she endured the "Hunger Winter" of 1944. During this time, she suffered from severe malnutrition, anemia, and edema, surviving on tulip bulbs and grass to stave off starvation. She witnessed the horrors of war, including the deportation of Jewish neighbors, which deeply influenced her later humanitarian work.

EDUCATION From 1935 to 1938, Hepburn attended Miss Rigden's School, an independent girls' school in Elham, Kent, England. 

During the war, she studied at the Arnhem Conservatory in the Netherlands, where she trained in ballet alongside her standard curriculum. After the war, she continued her ballet training in Amsterdam under Sonia Gaskell and later in London with the renowned Marie Rambert, though she was eventually told her height (5'7") and the effects of wartime malnutrition would prevent her from becoming a prima ballerina.

CAREER RECORD Her career began in the late 1940s as a chorus girl in West End musicals like High Button Shoes and Sauce Tartare and minor roles in British films. 

1951 Hepburn was discovered by the French novelist Colette, who cast her in the title role of the Broadway play Gigi

1953 Her film breakthrough came with Roman Holiday, which won her an Academy Award

1957 She retired from full-time acting in the late 1960s to focus on her family, returning only occasionally for films. 

1989 Hepburn was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF. 

APPEARANCE Hepburn stood 5 feet 7 inches tall and maintained a weight of approximately 110 pounds throughout her adult life. She was known for her large, dark doe eyes, thick eyebrows, and pixie haircut, which accentuated her high cheekbones.

Despite being a beauty icon, she was critical of her own appearance, describing herself as a "skinny broad" with a "big nose," "big feet" (size 10), and a flat chest. (2)

Audrey Hepburn as Princess Ann in Roman Holiday by Bud Fraker, 1953.

FASHION Hepburn is synonymous with timeless elegance. Her collaboration with French designer Hubert de Givenchy created a style characterized by clean lines and sophisticated simplicity. Key elements of her look included the Little Black Dress (most notably in Breakfast at Tiffany's), Capri pants, ballet flats, trench coats, and oversized sunglasses. She was inducted into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1961.

She favored clothes that were comfortable and practical, often opting for simple lines that highlighted her silhouette rather than revealing it. .

Despite her delicate frame, she wore size 10 shoes and often bought ballet flats half a size larger.

CHARACTER Hepburn was known for her humility, kindness, and discipline. Colleagues described her as punctual and professional, lacking the "diva" behavior common among stars of her magnitude. She was described as introverted and deeply private, preferring a quiet family life over the Hollywood social scene. 

She often battled nerves and anxiety during filming, smoking to keep them at bay.

In her later years, she demonstrated tireless dedication to humanitarian causes.

SPEAKING VOICE Hepburn possessed a unique, soft, and breathy voice with a distinct "Mid-Atlantic" accent—a blend of upper-class British Received Pronunciation with Dutch and American influences. She was a polyglot, fluent in English, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, and German. 

SENSE OF HUMOUR Hepburn valued humor highly in her personal life. She  famously said, "I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner."

RELATIONSHIPS Hepburn was engaged to industrialist James Hanson in 1952 but called it off, realizing their careers would keep them apart.

She had a passionate affair with her Sabrina co-star William Holden but ended it upon learning he had a vasectomy and could not give her children.

Hepburn married American actor Mel Ferrer on September 25, 1954 in Bürgenstock, Switzerland, in a small, private ceremony at a local chapel on the Bürgenstock mountain overlooking Lake Lucerne. They had one son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer (b. 1960), and divorced in 1968.

She married Italian psychiatrist-neurologist Andrea Dotti on January 18, 1969, also in Switzerland; some biographies specify that they wed in Morges, near Lake Geneva, before settling in Rome and later at her Swiss home La Paisible. They had one son, Luca Dotti (b. 1970), and divorced in 1982 due to his infidelity.

Audrey Hepburn and Andrea Dotti By photo ©ErlingMandelmann

From 1980 until her death, her partner was Dutch actor Robert Wolders, describing these years as the happiest of her life. 

MONEY AND FAME As one of the most successful actresses of her time, she achieved immense fame and was one of the few entertainers to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards).

Hepburn viewed fame as a byproduct of her work rather than a goal. She often retreated from the spotlight to raise her children, living a quiet life in Switzerland and Rome away from the Hollywood party scene. She used her fame in later life as a tool to draw global attention to the suffering of children through UNICEF. 

FOOD AND DRINK Hepburn loved Italian food, specifically pasta. Her son Luca stated she had a "serious pasta addiction," and her signature dish was spaghetti al pomodoro with fresh basil. (3)

She was also known for her love of chocolate and would occasionally enjoy a scotch in the evening. Due to her wartime experiences, she never dieted but ate small portions of healthy food.

ENTERTAINMENT CAREER Audrey Hepburn’s career, viewed from a comfortable armchair and preferably with a cup of tea the size of Belgium, resembles one of those long continental train journeys that begin in a small, quiet station and end somewhere glamorous, windy, and improbably important. She started in the late 1940s, when Europe was still knitting itself back together after the war, dancing in modest ballet ensembles in Amsterdam and London. She had, by all accounts, the sort of presence on stage that causes perfectly sensible producers to lean forward in their seats and make small, involuntary noises of interest. Before long she was appearing in West End revues with jaunty names like Sauce Tartare and Sauce Piquante, and soon after that, she was swept up into the busy ecosystem of minor British film roles—the cinematic equivalent of graduate school. Then came Broadway’s Gigi in 1951, which rather abruptly relocated her from hardworking European ingénue to someone American theatre people whispered about at dinner parties.

Everything changed in 1953 with Roman Holiday. One minute she was a promising actress with good posture; the next she was winning an Academy Award and becoming so famous that one suspects she could have walked into a room and negotiated peace between sworn enemies simply by casting those enormous, implausibly luminous eyes at them. 

Hepburn in a screen test for Roman Holiday (1953) 

The 1950s were a cascade of triumphs: Sabrina, War and Peace, Funny Face, The Nun’s Story. These films cemented what would become known as the Hepburn “gamine” persona—elegant but never icy, modern but never aloof, and always giving the sense that she knew slightly more about the human heart than you did.

The 1960s were her imperial phase—Audrey at full wattage. As Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) she created a character so enduring that people still buy oversized sunglasses in the faint hope of achieving even five percent of her effect. She chased this with the romantic-thriller Charade (1963) opposite Cary Grant, who seemed genetically engineered to stand next to Audrey Hepburn on a movie screen. Then came My Fair Lady (1964), in which she made Eliza Doolittle both regal and heartbreakingly fragile. By the time she did Two for the Road and Wait Until Dark (both 1967), she seemed keen to remind the world that she could do tense, psychologically thorny roles as well as anyone, preferably without breaking a sweat. Wait Until Dark, in which she played a blind woman under siege, earned her another armful of award nominations and showed that underneath that famous poise was a spine made of something decidedly steely.

And then, in one of cinema’s more refreshing plot twists, she stepped back. Rather than working herself into oblivion, she chose to have children, live her life, and pick projects like a tired tourist choosing pastries—slowly, carefully, and only the ones that looked truly worth it. There were a few films in the 1970s and 1980s—Robin and Marian (1976), Bloodline (1979), Love Among Thieves (1987)—and then a brief, heavenly farewell as a literal angel in Steven Spielberg’s Always (1989). It is possibly the only time in film history that an actor’s final performance could be accurately summarized as “glowing.”

Her legacy is, rather spectacularly, everywhere. She is one of the very few human beings to claim an Oscar, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy without appearing to break into a sweat over any of them. Her screen presence was a study in understatement—a sort of quiet emotional radiance that directors adored and audiences never quite recovered from. The list of collaborators reads like a syllabus for a graduate seminar in postwar cinema: Wyler, Wilder, Donen, Edwards, and, in sartorial matters, the devotional partnership with Hubert de Givenchy. You could argue that she single-handedly invented mid-century chic simply by standing still in a little black dress.

In the end, Audrey Hepburn became not just a star, but a kind of shared cultural memory—proof that grace, intelligence, and humanity can, occasionally, conquer absolutely everything.

MUSIC AND ARTS Her primary artistic passion was ballet, which she pursued from a young age.  She was a talented dancer and performed illegally for the Dutch Resistance during the war. Her professional career later moved to musical theatre on the West End, and she sang her own vocals in films like Funny Face.

She famously wanted to sing her own songs in My Fair Lady and was devastated when her vocals were dubbed by Marnie Nixon.

LITERATURE Hepburn was an avid reader. Her favorite book was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. She also loved Rudyard Kipling (specifically The Jungle Book).

She declined the role of Anne Frank in the film adaptation of The Diary of a Young Girl because she felt the book was too emotionally close to her own wartime experiences.

She adored poetry. Her favorite poem was “Unending Love” by Rabindranath Tagore, which Gregory Peck movingly recited on camera after her death. (1)

NATURE She found deep solace in nature and gardening, famously saying, "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow" Hepburn personally tended the gardens at her Swiss home, La Paisible.

She hosted a documentary series titled Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn.

In 1990, a hybrid breed of tulip was named in her honor.

PETS  Hepburn was a devoted animal lover. Her pets included a Yorkshire Terrier named Mr. Famous, who appeared with her in scenes, and another Yorkie named Assam of Assam. Later in life, she owned Jack Russell Terriers named Penny and Jackie.

Her most famous pet was Pippin, a baby deer (nicknamed “Ip”). The animal trainer encouraged her to live with the fawn so it would bond with her for the film Green Mansions. Pippin followed her everywhere—even into grocery stores. (1)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Her main hobbies included gardening, walking her dogs, and reading. She was not known for playing organized sports but maintained her fitness through walking and her background in dance. 

SCIENCE AND MATHS Hepburn was fascinated by the biological and emotional needs of children through her UNICEF work.

The asteroid 4238 Audrey is named after her. (1)

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Hepburn was raised in a Christian environment (her mother was a Christian Scientist) but was not dogmatic in her adult years. She described herself as having "enormous faith" but it was a personal spirituality connected to nature and love rather than strict organized religion.

Her philosophy of life was deeply affected by the suffering she witnessed and endured during the war, leading to her famous humanitarian efforts,

POLITICS She generally avoided political partisanship but was fiercely committed to humanitarian causes. Her childhood experience under fascism made her deeply anti-totalitarian. In her later work with UNICEF, she met with world leaders to advocate for children's rights, transcending typical political divides. She also addressed the US Congress and the UN on issues of global poverty and child welfare.

In speeches for UNICEF, Hepburn humbly admitted she was "not an expert" in economics or politics, relying instead on her authority as a mother and witness to suffering. 

SCANDAL The most significant potential scandal in her life involved her parents' support of the British Union of Fascists and her father's imprisonment as a Nazi sympathizer, facts she successfully kept out of the press during her career. Her affair with the married William Holden during the filming of Sabrina was also a closely guarded secret at the time

The major potential scandals of her life were managed discreetly. These included her parents' membership in the British Union of Fascists and her father's imprisonment as a Nazi sympathizer, which she kept hidden to protect her career[web: 1][web: 15]. Her affair with the married William Holden during the filming of Sabrina was also a significant secret of her time[web: 5][web: 15].

MILITARY RECORD While not a soldier, Hepburn served the Dutch Resistance during World War II as a teenager. She carried secret messages in her ballet shoes, distributed underground newspapers, and performed "blackout performances" (silent dance recitals behind closed windows) to raise money for the resistance.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Hepburn suffered from lifelong health issues stemming from wartime starvation, including anemia and a permanently low metabolism. She remained thin not through dieting, but due to these underlying conditions.

During the Battle of Arnhem, she served as a volunteer nurse, even helping a wounded British paratrooper—Terence Young, who would later direct her in Wait Until Dark. (1)

She was diagnosed with appendiceal cancer after returning from a UNICEF trip to Somalia in 1992.

HOMES During her marriage to Andrea Dotti, she lived in a penthouse in Rome

For the last 30 years of her life, her primary residence was "La Paisible" (The Peaceful), an 18th-century stone farmhouse in Tolochenaz, Switzerland. 

TRAVEL Her film career took her to locations including Rome (Roman Holiday), Paris (Funny Face, Charade), and The Belgian Congo (The Nun's Story).

In her final years (1988–1992), she undertook grueling field missions for UNICEF to war-torn and famine-stricken countries including Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Vietnam.

DEATH Audrey Hepburn died in her sleep from appendiceal cancer at her home in Tolochenaz, Switzerland, on January 20, 1993, at the age of 63. She is buried in the Tolochenaz Cemetery.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA She is the subject of countless biographies, documentaries, artworks, and tributes. Her image—often in black Givenchy and pearls—remains one of the most reproduced in 20th-century culture.

ACHIEVEMENTS Academy Award for Roman Holiday

Tony Award for Ondine

Grammy Award for Enchanted Tales

Emmy Award for Gardens of the World

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador

Enduring global status as a humanitarian and fashion icon

Sources: (1) Encyclopaedia of Trivia (2) 50 Megs (3) People magazine