Elegance at 80
Audrey Hepburn is deemed among the most beautiful women of all time and her looks are compared with the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti celebrated for her looks. Her beauty and talent have wooed cinegoers the world over. Our very own Aamir Khan is one of her great fans and he air-dashed from the US where he was holidaying with his children to hold a special screening of his directorial debut Taare Zameen Par as a part of the actress’ 80th birth anniversary celebrations. Among Aamir’s list of favourite Hepburn films are Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Breakfast At Tiffany’s and My Fair Lady. At one point of time he was even keen to adapt Roman Holiday in Hindi. Such is the enduring appeal of the actor.

At the anniversary celebrations, Hepburn’s son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, offered an intimate glimpse through this emotional and candid memoir, Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit. Sean tells his mother’s remarkable story, from her childhood in war-torn Holland to the height of her fame to her autumn years far from the camera and the crush of the paparazzi. In this memoir, Sean remembers his mother as only a son can.

Unseen photographs of Audrey Hepburn also went on show in a display coinciding with her 80th anniversary.

The exhibition, entitled Proud Galleries And The Sam Shaw Archives Ltd. Presents Audrey And Marilyn, will be on display at London’s Proud Central from April 20 to July 26.

Abandoned by father
Born on May 4, 1929, in Brussels, Belgium, Audrey was the only child of Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, a Briton, and his second wife, the former Baroness Ella, a Dutch woman. Her father’s job with a British Insurance Company meant that the family travelled often between Brussels, England and the Netherlands. Between 1935 and ‘38, Hepburn attended a boarding school for girls in Elham, Kent.

She had two half-brothers by her mother’s first marriage to a Dutch nobleman. Her parents were members of the British Union of Fascists in the mid-’30s, but they were divorced in 1935 and her father, who was a Nazi sympathiser, left the family.

Young Audrey was most traumatised by her father’s abandonment. Later in life, she tracked him in Dublin through the Red Cross. While he remained distant from her, she stayed in touch with him and even supported him until his death.

Surviving Nazis in World War II
In 1939, her mother moved the family comprising Audrey and her two half-brothers to their grandfather’s home in Arnhem in the Netherlands. Her mother thought the Netherlands would be safe from German attack. Audrey attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939-’45, where she trained in ballet alongside the academics. In 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands and during the German occupation, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, because an ‘English-sounding’ name was considered dangerous.

By 1944, Audrey became a proficient ballerina and she danced secretly to collect money for the Dutch resistance.

Vying for extra roles!
After graduating from Arnhem Conservatory, Audrey moved to Amsterdam where she took ballet lessons and studied drama. In 1948, she moved to London to take dancing lessons with the renowned Marie Rambert. She worked part-time as a model for fashion photographers to pay the fees for her dance training. Owing to her relatively tall height (5’ 7”) and cadaverous frame (with poor nutrition) Audrey could not be a prima ballerina. Audrey then decided to pursue acting as a career.

Audrey’s mother made ends meet by doing some menial jobs. Audrey took up acting only because “I needed the money; acting paid 3 pounds more than ballet jobs.” Her acting career took off with the educational film Dutch In Seven Lessons in 1948. She worked in some musical productions. She registered with the casting officers of Britain’s film studios in the hope of getting work as an extra.

Audrey’s very first role in a feature film was that of a hotel receptionist in the British film One Wild Oat. Followed some minor roles in films like Young Wives’ Tale and Monte Carlo Baby. During the filming of the latter, Audrey was chosen to play the lead character in the Broadway play Gigi, that had a successful six month run.

Roman Holiday with Peck
Initially, Elizabeth Taylor was pencilled for the role of Princess Ann in Roman Holiday opposite Gregory Peck, but director William Wyler was so impressed by Audrey’s screen-test, that he cast her in the lead. Wyler said, “She had everything I was looking for: charm, innocence and talent. She also was very funny. She was absolutely enchanting, and we said, ‘That’s the girl!’”

Expectedly, the credit titles had Gregory Peck’s name appeared in large font with “Introducing Audrey Hepburn” beneath. After filming had been completed, Peck called his agent and had the billing changed so that her name also appeared before the film’s title in type as large as his! Audrey and Peck bonded during filming, the grapevine had it that they were romantically involved, but both denied it. Audrey conceded, nonetheless, “Actually, you have to be a little bit in love with your leading man and vice-versa. If you’re going to portray love, you have to feel it. You can’t do it any other way. But you don’t carry it beyond the sets.”

She was awarded both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Roman Holiday and was signed on for a seven-picture contract with Paramount with twelve months in-between films .

Box-office diva
After Roman Holiday, she filmed Billy Wilder ‘s Sabrina with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. During the filming of Sabrina, Hepburn and the already- married Holden became romantically involved and she hoped to marry him and have children. She broke off the relationship when Holden revealed that he had had a vasectomy.

By the mid-1950s, she was one of the biggest motion picture stars in Hollywood. Becoming one of Hollywood’s most popular box-office attractions, Audrey co-starred with actors such as Henry Fonda in War And Peace, Fred Astaire in Funny Face, Maurice Chevalier and Gary Cooper in Love In The Afternoon, Anthony Perkins in Green Mansions, Burt Lancaster in The Unforgiven, Shirley MacLaine and James Garner in The Children’s Hour, George Peppard in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Cary Grant in Charade, Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady , Peter O’Toole in How To Steal A Million and Sean Connery in Robin And Marian.

Rex Harrison called Audrey his favourite leading lady. After her death, Gregory Peck tearfully recited her favourite poem, Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore on camera. About the reported animosity with Humphrey Bogart, she clarified, “Sometimes it’s the so-called ‘tough guys’ that are the most tender-hearted, as Bogey was with me.” Funny Face in 1957 was one of her favourites because she got to dance with Fred Astaire. Her Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany’s became an iconic character in American cinema which she termed “the jazziest of my career”.

Eliza’s charm
Audrey was cast as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (’64) instead of Julie Andrews, who had played the role on Broadway. The decision not to cast Andrews was made before Audrey was chosen. In fact, Audrey herself had turned down the dream role initially and asked to cast Andrews instead. However, when she learnt that the choice was between her and Elizabeth Taylor, who was also vying for the part, she accepted the role promptly!

The film shoot wasn’t smooth sailing for Audrey, who recorded vocals, but was later informed that her voice would be dubbed by Marni Nixon. She walked off in a huff from the set but returned the next day apologising for her “wicked” behaviour. The controversy over Hepburn’s casting reached its height at the 1965 Academy Awards season, when Hepburn was not nominated for best actress while Andrews was, for Mary Poppins. Andrews won the award.

Divorces and downfall
Two films in 1967 proved to be difficult for the much-loved actress -Two For The Road with a theme of divorce and Wait Until Dark, a thriller in which she played the part of a blind woman being terrorised that took a toll on her mental peace. The latter was produced by Mel Ferrer and the two were on the verge of being divorced then. She was so stressed during the film that she lost eight kilos. Hereon, Audrey acted rarely. She married Italian psychiatrist Dr Andrea Dotti and had her second son. She, subsequently, divorced Dotti and tried to stage a comeback in the period film Robin And Marian (’67) opposite Sean Connery.

Audrey played the lead in Sidney Sheldon’s Bloodline in ’69 but the film was a major flop. Her last leading role was in the comedy They All Laughed, but this film also failed to work wonders. She was seen in the tele-film Love Among Thieves in 1987. Her last cameo as an angel was in Steven Spielberg’s Always in ’88. This film was an average grosser. In her final years, she hosted the television documentary Gardens Of The World With Audrey Hepburn and she recorded an album, Audrey Hepburn’s Enchanted Tales featuring readings of classic children’s stories, which won her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.

She succumbed to cancer on January 20, 1993, in Switzerland.