Three Academy awards winner Roman Holiday (1953) is one of my favorite movies. Audrey Hepburn received the best actress award for the film. Her role as Princess Ann is impeccable and charming. She plays a royal with elegance, demeanor, and voice in such a natural way that is very believable. Her big eyes show depth and sympathy. The desire to be a commoner interacting with her counter-part produced humorous effects. It is her innocence and smile that captured the heart of the audience. There were attempts to mimic the film, but none had even come close. Roman Holiday is made for Audrey Hepburn. She led a very successful career in acting and left a legacy of good will to inspire others as UNICEF ambassador.
Audrey Hepburn was born on May 4, 1929, in Brussels, Belgium. Three weeks after birth, Audrey contracted such a terrible case of whooping cough, her heart stopped. Her mother had not called a doctor, and revived her by spanking. It seemed to signal that Audrey would have an unusual life against all odds ahead since the start. Her father was an English banker and her mother, Ella van Heemstra, was a Dutch baroness. Ella was the daughter of Baron Aarnoud van Heemstra, who was mayor of Arnhem from 1910 to 1920 and served as Governor of Suriname from 1921 to 1928. Ella’s mother was Elbrig Willemine Henriette, Baroness van Asbeck. So, Audrey really was blue-blood from the beginning. Although born in Belgium, Audrey had British citizenship through her father. Both of her parents were divorced before they married, so Audrey had two elder half brothers. At first, everything seemed perfect for the little princess who often spent time with her grandparents at their estates in Arnhem, Holland. In Audrey’s childhood, her father was often away from home and showed little interest in her, nor her half brothers. He was busy in his political involvement with the fascist activities in Belgium and other places. Audrey’s response to his coolness was typical of any child: she doubled her efforts to win his love and approval, but to no avail.
Her parents drifted apart farther and farther. In time, the clever and cheerful child became aware of her parents’ increasing arguments and was confused by the cold war that prevailed when they sat down to dinner. At the end of May, 1935, Audrey’s father walked out of the door with no prior threats or warnings when she was at age of six. The typical reactions for every child when a parent walked out set in- Did she do something wrong to cause it? Was she in some way unlovable? The feeling of abandonment was never truly healed with Audrey for the rest of her life according to her elder son. Audrey said later in adulthood, “I myself was born with an enormous need for affection and a terrible need to give it”. This devastating incident made Audrey feel very insecure about affection, and the abandonment “has stayed with me through my own relationship. When I fell in love and got married, I lived in constant fear of being left.”
After her parents divorced, Audrey went to London where she went to a private girl school and took up ballet lessons. Audrey considered entering ballet dance as her career. She learned and eventually spoke English, and French fluently in addition to her mother tongue, Dutch. As a side note, Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, French, and German (Brussels is located in the Dutch speaking region). Ella commanded her daughter to return to Netherland, where she then lived, after England declared war with Germany in 1939 thinking that Netherland would avoid the conflict as neutral and be a safe haven for the family. It turned out that Ella miscalculated the situation and Germany invaded Netherland and occupied Arnhem where Ella and Audrey lived in the spring of 1940. The van Heemstras lost all their wealth and property under occupation. The family was becoming progressively more impoverished. Consequently, Audrey gave ballet instructions to the younger children to raise money for the family.
By this time, the Baroness had become the unofficial leader of the Dutch Resistance movement in her hometown. Her ex-husband’s activities connected with Nazi now provided a cover for the underground group. Audrey gradually involved in the Resistance movement as a messenger helping delivering papers concealed in her shoes. In 1942, Audrey tested her acting abilities to the limit and gave what she always considered to be the performance of her lifetime. An English parachutist landed and went into hiding in the woods nearby Arnhem. Audrey was sent by her mother to carry a message to him because she spoke English and a child would be less suspicious. She made contact with the man by singing a song in English near his hiding place, relayed the message, and then she saw out of the corner of one eye a German soldier coming to her. She bent down and picked a clump of daisies immediately. By the time the soldier got close, she had her head in the flowers. She pretended to see him for the first time, and smiled casually as if she was distracted. Audrey offered him the bouquet. He took it, and patted her on the top of her head, and she hopped away.
The life under occupation was difficult for everyone, most people were malnourished. Audrey also developed a scheme in her refusing to eat. “If there is no food, then I am not going to need what I cannot have.” In 1944, the Gestapo had been beefing up its efforts to provide Germany with slave labor and captured Audrey on the street. As she joined a few others at the site, her captor and all the other Nazi soldiers but one left to gather more victims for the enslavement. At one point, the soldier put down his rifle against a lamppost, pulled a tobacco pouch from his jacket, and began to roll a cigarette. He was concentrating hard not to spill the tobacco. It was Audrey’s only chance. She took it and ran for her life. She rounded a corner before the awkward young soldier even realized she was missing, and then she fled down an alley. Toward the end of it, she ran down a few steps and forced open the door to an abandoned cellar. Audrey remained in that cellar prison accompanied by rats for nearly a month with only a few apples and a little bread in her bag. When the sounds of gun fires drew closer one day, Audrey finally got out the cellar and found her way home. Her mother was shocked and rejoiced to see her. Audrey suffered jaundice, hepatitis, in addition to anemia and asthma. This near death personal experience of hunger, fear, and the suffering of children in the war might have planted the seed for her later work in life.
The family moved to Amsterdam after the war and had to start from the ground up to earn a living regardless of their statues in the past. Money matters. Ella ventured into various jobs to earn money for Audrey to continue her study in ballet dancing. Audrey also did modeling to raise more incomes. Soon, the grace of movement became second nature to her. Her Calvinist upbringing had instilled hard working and thrift values. Surviving the deprivation of the war also trained her to be positive because there was no other way. Audrey got her first screen experience in a travel promotion film which requires a girl who was proficient in English and Dutch. Audrey started showing her quality as others had noticed, “She was cheerful, charming, and lovely.” In 1948, Audrey decided to go to London on a scholarship to advance her ballet career in Ballet Rambert, one of the prominent institutes at the time.
Training in ballet requires you to watch in the mirror and make corrections to the imperfect posture and movement. Audrey, as she later confessed, did not much like what she saw of herself in the reflections of the wall mirrors. She always fancied she was awkwardly put together. She has enormous eyes, and thick eyebrows, an incredibly long and slender neck, flat chest, skinny due to malnutrition and was too tall (5 feet and 7 inches) by standard of ballet. Individually, the parts of her body may indeed have been imperfect. However, the total effect with her voice and personality radiates elegance and sophistication. Audrey’s intonation connoted quality without confining her to any niche in the English class system. She is different and unique in style. This makes her stand out among the crowd. Soon, Audrey came to a sad but realistic conclusion that she was unlikely ever to reach the top in ballet. The expanding film industry was also in the midst to discover the star to come into being.
Modeling jobs were plentiful. As a model, Audrey was graceful and, it seemed, she had found her niche in life – until the film producers came calling eventually through a series of show engagements. She was signed to a bit part in the European film Dutch in Seven Lessons in 1948. Audrey was chosen as one of the ten chorus girls in the musical High Button Shoes (1948). She took minor part in Cecil Landeau’s Sauce Tartare (1949) and Sauce Piquante (1950). Through her theatrical work, she realized her voice was not strong and needed to be developed; she therefore took elocution lessons with the actor Felix Aylmer.
Later, she had a speaking role in the 1951 film, Young Wives’ Tale as Eve Lester. While shooting Monte Carlo Baby in 1951, the famed French writer, Collette spots Audrey and casts her as Gigi. The novel was being adapted for Broadway, and the producer was looking for the leading girl. The show brought Audrey to New York and launched her career in America. The opening night was such a great success, so the marquee on the theater was changed from “GIGI with Audrey Hepburn” before the opening night to ”AUDREY HEPBURN in Gigi” afterward.
Paramount Pictures had been tried for years to find an actress to portrait Princess Ann in Roman Holiday. She had to be beautiful but innocent, alluring yet untouchable. The studio did a publicized search in London, where Audrey took the audition before she left for New York. She was extremely impressive on the audition film, especially in the off-guard moment when she assumed the camera had stopped rolling after the director called “Cut.” The director had instructed the camera man to keep the camera rolling at the end of the scene. The film captured her true personality in a natural way. The executives who saw the audition film were fascinated and signed her on immediately. And we knew the rest is history. Originally, Roman Holiday was to have had only Gregory Peck’s name above its title, with “Introducing Audrey Hepburn” beneath in smaller font. However, Peck suggested to Director Wyler that he elevate her to equal billing so that her name appeared before the title and in type as large as his: “You’ve got to change that because she’ll be a big star and I’ll look like a big jerk.” One of the reasons for her popularity was the fact that she was so elf-like, joyful, great quality, and had class. One commented on the film, “She is not an actress we judge but a person we know and love.”
After winning the Best Actress in Roman Holiday, Audrey entered the uprising path in her career of the movies. She later said, “I was one of the lucky ones. I chose a profession I liked, and I was terribly fortunate in being discovered by William Wyler – and from then on, I went into such quality movies that I was able to accept them for the joy of doing them.” Of Hepburn’s twenty-seven films, quite a few have become classics. She was nominated for three other Academy Awards in addition to the one she won for Roman Holiday. She received numerous awards and honors including three Golden Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, Emmy Award, Grammy Award, and BAFTA Awards Audrey was named third on the list of the Greatest Female Stars of All Time by the American Film Institute.
It would not be complete for Audrey without mentioning her fashion. Audrey Hepburn redefined glamour with “elfin” features and a gamine waif-like figure that inspired designs by couturier Hubert de Givenchy who is credited for creating her style. Givenchy started designing her dresses since the film Sabrina (1954). Their collaboration in Sabrina formed a lifelong friendship till the last day when Audrey died. The simple, elegant style with special fabric and often in only black and white created a fashion that endures until today. Audrey had accrued the titles “most beautiful woman of all time” and “most beautiful woman of the 20th century” in polls by Evian and QVC respectively.
She was a ballet dancer who never performed in a full ballet. She was the world’s highest-paid film actress, who never took an acting lesson. Audrey surprised the world again in dedicating her later life to UNICEF. United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was created by the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1946, to provide emergency food and healthcare to children in countries that had been devastated by World War II.
Grateful for her own good fortune after enduring the German occupation as a child, she dedicated the remainder of her life to helping impoverished children in the poorest nations. She lends her name and fame to help raise money for the children as a Goodwill Ambassadors. It started with a concert in Tokyo, March 1988. “The numbers who attended exceeded our wildest expectations. It was like a national event.” The response prompted Audrey to dedicate herself for the benefits of the Children’s Fund. Audrey’s travels were made easier by her wide knowledge of languages; besides being naturally bilingual in English and Dutch, she also was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, and German.
Audrey was diagnosed with Cancer in 1992. She died in her home on January 20, 1993 at Tolochenaz, Switzerland. Audrey had two marriages and both fell apart. Each marriage left one son: Sean and Luca. Her legacy lives on in many ways; one of them is AUDREY HEPBURN CHILDREN’S FUND with Sean serving Chairman of the fund since 1994, and retired in December 2012. As a co-Founder, Luca has joined the Board of Directors and accepted the appointment as the Fund’s new Chairman.
“The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman is seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides. True beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It’s the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows and the beauty of a woman only grows with passing years.” ― Audrey Hepburn
Well indeed, that is Audrey Hepburn. She said it all of herself in her life. She is beautiful in my heart and many others.
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Written in May 2013