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Audrey Hepburn




Audrey Hepburn (May 4, 1929 - January 20, 1993) was a Belgian-born actress
and humanitarian.

Born Andrey Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston in Antwerp, Belgium, daughter of Joseph 
Anthony Hepburn-Ruston, a British banker, and Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a
Dutch aristocrat descended from French and English kings. She had two
half-brothers, Alexander and Ian Quarles van Ufford, by her mother's first
marriage to a Dutch nobleman. Ms. Hepburn attended private schools in
England and the Netherlands, but after the 1935 divorce of her parents she
was living with her mother in the Netherlands when the German invasion and
occupation of World War II occurred.

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 supply of
food and fuel for themselves. Without heat in their homes, or food to eat,
people in the Netherlands starved and froze to death in the streets, their
dead bodies stacked one on top of another. Suffering from starvation, Ms.
Hepburn developed numerous health problems associated with malnutrition and
the impact of those times would shape her life and values.

After the war, she and her mother moved to London, England where she studied
ballet, worked as a model, and, in 1951 began acting in films. After being
chosen to play the lead character in the Broadway play, Gigi, and after a
successful run in New York, Ms. Hepburn was offered a starring role in the
Hollywood motion picture, Roman Holiday. For her performance, she won the
Academy Award for Best Actress and over her illustrious career she would be
nominated best actress four more times. In the film Funny Face, Hepburn's
mother appeared as the patron of a sidewalk café.

One of Hollywood's most popular box-office attractions, Audrey Hepburn
co-starred with major actors such as Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart, Gary
Cooper, Cary Grant, Rex Harrison, Peter O'Toole, Gregory Peck, and Sean
Connery.

From 1967 onward, after fifteen highly successful years in film, Ms. Hepburn
only acted occasionally, her last role filmed in 1988 just before she was
appointed as a special ambassador to the United Nations Children's Fund .
Grateful for her own good fortune after being a victim of Nazi atrocities as
a child, Audrey Hepburn dedicated herself for the remainder of her life to
helping impoverished children in the world's poorest nations.

In 1992, President George Bush Sr. presented her with the Presidential Medal
of Freedom in recognition of her work with UNICEF. The Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, posthumously awarded her The Jean Hersholt
Humanitarian Award for her contribution to humanity.

She was married twice, to actor Mel Ferrer and Andrea Dotti, an Italian
doctor, and had two sons. At the time of her death, she was the companion of
Robert Wolders, a Dutch actor who was the widower of film star Merle Oberon.

Audrey Hepburn has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1652 Vine Street.

Audrey Hepburn died of colon cancer on January 20, 1993, in Tolchenaz, Vaud,
Switzerland and was interred there.

Selected filmography

   * Monte Carlo Baby - (1951)
   * The Lavender Hill Mob - (1951)
   * Roman Holiday - (1953)
   * Sabrina - (1954)
   * War and Peace - (1956)
   * Love in the Afternoon - (1957)
   * Funny Face - (1957)
   * The Nun's Story - (1959)
   * The Unforgiven - (1960)
   * Breakfast at Tiffany's - (1961)
   * Charade - (1963)
   * My Fair Lady - (1964)
   * How to Steal A Million - (1966)
   * Wait Until Dark - (1967)
   * Robin and Marian - (1976)

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