In the latest entry in a series profiling those performers who have lit up the screen, Cinema Paradiso celebrates the life and career of one of the most distinctive talents in Hollywood history - Audrey Hepburn. It's a cosmopolitan story whose crises and coincidences sometimes make it seem more dramatic than the films in which she would go on to star. But, throughout it all, Audrey Hepburn retained the dignity and determination that would make her so unique as both an actress and a campaigner for children's rights.
Mention the name 'Audrey Hepburn' and people immediately think of the little black dress, the elfin elegance, the demure doe eyes and the voice that photographer Cecil Beaton once claimed had 'the quality of heartbreak'. But we want you to forget the iconic image and reassess Hepburn's often overlooked gifts as an actress. She didn't always help herself, as she refused to play scenes, let alone take roles, of which she thought her fans would disapprove. As a consequence, she didn't make the number of films expected of a star of her magnitude. Yet, even when she was miscast or struggled to rise to the challenges posed by a particularly difficult role, it was always possible to see the intelligence that informed Hepburn's acting. To see what we mean, why not treat yourself to some of the titles available from Cinema Paradiso?
A Survivor Is Born
Few movie stars endured a tougher childhood than Audrey Hepburn. Born at 48 Rue Keyenveld in the Ixelles district of Brussels on 4 May 1929, she was the daughter of British businessman Joseph Ruston-Hepburn and Dutch baroness Ella van Heemstra. Both parents had been married before and Audrey had two half-brothers, Alex and Ian. Her father had added 'Hepburn' to his family name because he claimed to have been descended from James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Boswell, who is played by Martin Compson in Josie Rourke's Mary Queen of Scots (2018).
Despite spending her early years in comparative comfort in the Linkebeek part of the Belgian capital, Audrey became estranged from her father when he returned to London in 1935 to take up a role with the British Union of Fascists. He had little to do with her when, two years later, she enrolled at a small school in Eltham in Kent and all contact was severed after Joseph and Ella divorced in 1938. Indeed, it wasn't until the 1960s that Audrey managed to track him down to Dublin, with the help of the Red Cross.
Although Ella shared her ex-husband's right-wing views, she was keen to keep her children out of the seemingly inevitable war and took them to the family estate at Arnhem, in the hope that the Netherlands would be able to retain the neutrality that it had adopted during the Great War. However, while Audrey attended the local conservatory and studied ballet under Winja Marova, the Dutch proved unable to keep out of the conflict and, in 1940, Audrey started using the name Edda van Heemstra to hide her British connections.
Around the time that Audrey's half-brother, Ian, was deported to a labour camp near Berlin, her uncle was executed by the Gestapo in reprisal for acts of underground sabotage. Undaunted, the teenage Audrey started dancing to help raise funds for the Resistance and she later recalled hiding messages in her ballet shoes. She also remembered seeing children of her own age being taken away in cattle trucks and being forced to live off turnips and tulip bulb bread after food supplies were restricted in September 1944 following Operation Market Garden, the ill-fated Allied attempt to storm Arnhem that was recreated by Richard Attenborough in A Bridge Too Far (1977).
A Brief British Interlude
Hepburn bore the effects of malnutrition for the rest of her life, with her physique confounding her attempts to become a ballerina. The family had settled in Amsterdam after the war, with Audrey studying under Olga Tarasova. She also made her screen debut when she played an air hostess in Charles van der Linden and Henry Josephson's travelogue, Dutch in Seven Lessons (1948). But she only decided to commit to acting after her scholarship to the Ballet Rambert in London ended when Marie Rambert informed her that she was too small and frail to endure the rigours of life as a prima ballerina.
Having dropped 'Ruston' from her surname, Hepburn had made extra money by modelling and had featured in an advertisement for Lacto calamine lotion. While her mother took a variety of menial jobs, Hepburn also landed a spot in the chorus of the West End revue, High Button Shoes (1948). Producer Cecil Landeau was sufficiently impressed to offer her roles in Sauce Tartare (1949) and Sauce Piquante (1950) and she used some of her earnings to pay for acting and elocution lessons with the estimable character actor, Felix Aylmer. Director Frank Launder considered her too thin for the lead in Lady Godiva Rides Again and the part went to Pauline Stroud. But Hepburn did get to play a hotel receptionist in Charles Saunders's One Wild Oat and a cigarette girl in Mario Zampi's Laughter in Paradise (all 1951).
Taken by the newcomer, Zampi gave her a few lines of dialogue with Guy Middleton and signed her to a freelance contract at Associated British Pictures. This allowed her to join a starry cast in the BBC play, The Silent Village , as well as share a scene with Alec Guinness as Chiquita at the end of Charles Crichton's classic Ealing comedy, The Lavender Hill Mob . Hepburn finished a busy year by taking the minor role of Eve Lester in Henry Cass's housing shortage comedy, Young Wives' Tale. However, her hopes of making a breakthrough in Hollywood were frustrated when Deborah Kerr pipped her to the part of Lygia in Mervyn LeRoy's Roman epic, Quo Vadis (all 1951).
Hepburn got to dance on screen for the first time in Thorold Dickinson's Secret People , in which she and Valentina Cortese play sisters who are forced into exile in London after their father is executed by a tinpot European dictator. But it was while she was on the continent filming a small role in Jean Boyer's musical, Nous Irons à Monte Carlo (both 1952), that Hepburn was spotted by Colette - the French author played by Keira Knightley in Wash Westmoreland's Colette (2018) - who thought she was perfect for the lead in Anita Loos's Broadway adaptation of her celebrated novel, Gigi . Despite Ella coming backstage on opening night and telling her daughter, 'You've done very well, my dear, considering that you have no talent,' Hepburn won the Theatre World Award for Best Actress. Moreover, when contract complications prevented Jean Simmons from being cast, Hepburn found herself being whisked off to Italy to play her first screen lead.
An Overnight Sensation
Although it's commonly believed that Hepburn made an immediate transition from British bit parts to Hollywood stardom, she actually headlined the teleplays The Stove Won't Light and Rainy Day in Paradise Junction (both 1952) before playing Princess Ann in William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953). He had inherited the project after Frank Capra had left Paramount and recognised immediately that Hepburn had a freshness that made her far more suitable for the role of the runaway royal than his first choice, Elizabeth Taylor. Moreover, her spontaneity prompted Gregory Peck to loosen up as the journalist who guesses her identity and shelters in his cramped garret and he insisted on her sharing top billing.
Having won a Golden Globe and the BAFTA for Best British Actress, Hepburn completed a hat-trick by scooping the Academy Award. She also signed a seven-year contract with Paramount and teamed with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden in Billy Wilder's Sabrina (1954), which earned her another Oscar nomination and the BAFTA for Best Actress for her performance as the chauffeur's daughter who is courted by a pair of wealthy brothers. But Hepburn was keen to hone her craft and insisted on being allowed to take stage roles. Her dedication was rewarded when she not only won a Tony Award for her performance in Jean Giraudoux's Ondine (1954), but she also married her co-star, Mel Ferrer, whom she had first met at a cocktail party hosted by Gregory Peck.
Such was Hepburn's meteoric rise that she was proclaimed the Golden Globe World Film Favorite of 1955, while Cecil Beaton wrote in Vogue that she typified the new 'feminine ideal' with her short hair and gamine looks. Following a period of recovery after the first of several miscarriages, Hepburn reunited with Ferrer in King Vidor's adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1956), with her performance as Natasha Rostova earning her further Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.
The Ferrers teamed again in playing Crown Prince Rudolf and Maria Vetsera in Anatole Litvak's TV version of Mayerling, which recreated the 1889 tragedy that rocked the Habsburg monarchy. However, MGM producer Arthur Freed allowed Hepburn to make a charming change of pace when he loaned director Stanley Donen, musical arranger Roger Edens and several other key members of his fabled musicals unit so that Fred Astaire's photographer could transform Hepburn's Parisian bookshop assistant into a fashion model in the exquisitely chic Gershwin gem, Funny Face (1957).
Astaire was uncomfortable with the 30-year age gap and Gary Cooper seemed equally ill at ease in Billy Wilder's take on Claude Anet's novel, Love in the Afternoon (1957). However, the casting gods proved themselves fallible in bringing together Hepburn and Anthony Perkins for Ferrer's adaptation of William Henry Hudson's novel, Green Mansions (1959), which charted the relationship between a Venezuelan political fugitive and a 'bird girl' in the depths of the rainforest. Despite this being Hepburn's first sizeable disappointment, Tinseltown sages suggested that she allowed Ferrer to exercise too much control over her career. But the project typified her insistence on accepting assignments that tested her as a performer and prevented her from being typecast.
Her Way or the Highway
To this point, Hepburn had relied on her natural instincts to shape her performances. But, having been cast as Belgian nun Sister Luke in Fred Zinnemann's interpretation of Kathryn Hulme's bestseller, The Nun's Story (1959), Hepburn spent months in convents studying the religious way of life and discussing points of faith with committed believers. Her efforts were rewarded with a third Oscar nomination for Best Actress and a second BAFTA. However, the story of a missionary sister who gives up her vocation after falling for a doctor (played by Peter Finch) caused something of a controversy. However, Mary Louise Habets, who was the inspiration for the original novel, was so touched by Hepburn's portrayal that she helped nurse her back to health following a near-fatal fall from a horse while shooting John Huston's The Unforgiven (1960).
Based on a book by Alan Le May, this psychological Western was one of the first films to explore the racism inherent in the frontier era and cast Hepburn as the Kiowa foundling who is protected by adoptive brother Burt Lancaster after the rancher's son she has been dating is killed by her tribe. Six decades ago, nobody batted an eyelid if a white performer took roles like Rima the bird girl and Rachel Zachary. But such casting choices belong to the past and these films may prove discomfiting and even distasteful to some viewers.
There are those who find Hepburn's most iconic role equally unsettling, as Holly Golightly personifies the materialist spirit that has shaped modern Western society. Having based the character on Marilyn Monroe, novelist Truman Capote was frustrated by Hepburn being cast in Blake Edwards's Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961), especially as she insisted on playing down the true nature of Holly's profession. Screenwriter George Axelrod was also vexed by Hepburn's refusal to play an anti-heroine, but audiences didn't seem to care a jot, as they were enchanted by Hepburn strumming a guitar along to Henry Mancini's 'Moon River' and sporting the 'little black dress' that had been designed for her by Hubert de Givenchy, who would dictate the Hepburn style for the rest of the decade.
Despite the carping of Capote and Axelrod, Hepburn received another Oscar nomination for her work and those who accused her of playing things safe were forced to eat their words when she teamed with Shirley MacLaine in The Children's Hour (1961) to play teachers who are charged with being lesbians by class bully Karen Balkin and her favourite victim, Veronica Cartwright. Director William Wyler had previously filmed Lillian Hellman's play as These Three in 1936, with Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon as the women being tormented by the excellent Bonita Granville. But the critics proved lukewarm and Hepburn took an extended period of maternity leave to raise her new son, Sean Ferrer.
Stanley Donen coaxed her back to work to co-star with Cary Grant in the Hitchcockian thriller, Charade (1963). Having previously turned down Roman Holiday and Sabrina because he was uneasy at being a quarter of a century older than Hepburn, Grant was persuaded to accept the part of Peter Joshua because it was made clear that imperilled widow Regina Lampert was pursuing him rather than the other way round. For her part, Hepburn won her third BAFTA and snagged another Golden Globe nomination. But she enjoyed her next picture much less, even though Richard Quine's Paris When It Sizzles (1964) reunited her with William Holden. They had enjoyed a moment during the making of Sabrina, but Hepburn wasn't interested in rekindling the flame. Moreover, Holden's alcoholism made him a trying co-star and Hepburn took out her frustration on cinematographer Claude Renoir, who was fired for his supposedly unflattering imagery.
Although Hepburn refused to make her entrance while being splashed by a cart trundling through a puddle, the boot was on the other foot during the shooting of George Cukor's My Fair Lady (1964). As Julie Andrews had triumphed on Broadway as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle opposite Rex Harrison's Henry Higgins, there was much disquiet that Hepburn had been cast to give the picture additional star wattage after Cary Grant had famously refused to play the elocution teacher with the words, 'Not only will I not play it, I won't even go and see it if you don't put Rex Harrison in it,' To make matters worse, it was revealed that Marni Nixon had been hired to dub Eliza's songs, which nettled Hepburn, as she had been allowed to sing her own numbers in Funny Face and had not been informed of the studio's decision. Her humiliation was completed when she was snubbed by the Academy, as Andrews took home the statuette for Best Actress for her performance in Robert Stevenson's Disney classic, Mary Poppins (1964).
The Long Fade Out
Returning to the limelight after a year away, Hepburn reunited with director William Wyler for How to Steal a Million (1966), a modish caper comedy that saw Hepburn play the daughter of a French art forger who enlists the help of burglar Peter O'Toole to steal a sculpture before it can be exposed as a fake. She looked equally chic in Stanley Donen's Two For the Road (1967). Relishing Frederic Raphael's sophisticated dialogue and Donen's new-wavish approach to individual scenes and the overall structuring of the storyline, Hepburn gave one of her finest performances alongside Albert Finney, as a bickering couple reflecting on their sometimes stormy relationship.
Unfortunately, her own marriage was crumbling and the experience of having Ferrer produce Terence Young's Wait Until Dark (1967) proved extremely stressful. Hepburn earned her fifth and final Oscar nomination for her skilled display of vulnerability and resourcefulness as the blind woman whose apartment is invaded by crooks searching for a doll stuffed with heroin. But the picture convinced her to seek a divorce and she met second husband, Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, on a cruise later in 1968. Having given birth to a second son, Luca, Hepburn decided to focus on family life and nine years were to pass before Richard Lester lured her back before the cameras to co-star with Sean Connery in Robin and Marian (1976), which reunited the outlaw of Sherwood Forest with the fair maiden who had become the abbess of a convent.
While Hepburn enjoyed the production, she only consented to join Ben Gazzara, James Mason and Romy Schneider in Terence Young's adaptation of Sidney Sheldon's blockbusting novel, Bloodline (1979), as a favour to the director. With her home life unsettled because of Dotti's infidelities, Hepburn had a fling with Gazzara while playing a pharmaceutical heiress who strives to unmask her father's killer. But this glitzy melodrama failed to impress and Hepburn was sold equally short by Peter Bogdanovich's They All Laughed (1981), which reunited her with Gazzara in a misfiring comedy about private detectives pursuing misbehaving wives.
A TV-movie assignation with Robert Wagner in Robert Young's pilot, Love Among Thieves (1987), similarly fell flat, as Hepburn played an aristocratic concert pianist who steals Fabergé eggs to pay her kidnapped fiancé's ransom. Hepburn donated her salary to UNICEF and realised that she was far happier working for the children's charity than she was making films. Now living with Dutch actor, Robert Wolders (who was Merle Oberon's widower), she devoted her time to good causes and only returned fleetingly to the screen to cameo as an angel in Steven Spielberg's Always (1988) and host the posthumously released PBS series, Audrey Hepburn: Gardens of the World (1993).
The Academy rewarded Hepburn for her philanthropy with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, while she also received a lifetime achievement award from BAFTA. By this time, however, she was already suffering from cancer that would claim her on 20 January 1993 in the Swiss town of Tolochenaz, where she is buried. In the months following her death, she became only the fifth person to win an Oscar, Tony, Emmy and Grammy when she was posthumously presented with the latter pair for her gardens programme and the children's spoken word album, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales.
Such is Hepburn's mystique that some of her most iconic roles have been recreated in largely lacklustre remakes, such as Noel Nosseck's Roman Holiday (1987), which saw Catherine Oxenberg play Princess Elysa. Julia Ormond stepped into the lead in Sydney Pollack's Sabrina (1995), with Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear taking over the Holden and Bogart roles, while Thandie Newton and Mark Wahlberg failed to banish memories of Hepburn and Grant in Jonathan Demme's Charade reboot, The Truth About Charlie (2002). In an interesting footnote, Newton's role in John Woo's Mission: Impossible II (2000) had been based on Hepburn's character in How to Steal a Million.
Emmy Rossum and Jennifer Love Hewitt fared slightly better in playing the star at various times in her life in Steve Robman's biopic, The Audrey Hepburn Story (2000). But, if you prefer the real thing, Cinema Paradiso has a number of documentaries about and featuring Hepburn, including Everette Webber's Hollywood Musicals of the 60s (2000), The Hollywood Collection: Audrey Hepburn: Remembered (2008), Craig McCall's Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff (2010), Audrey Hepburn in the Movies , Lisa Immordino Vreeland and Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt's Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel , Jeffrey Schwarz's Vito (all 2011), Jay Roach's Trumbo (2015), Mike Reilly's Pixiwoo Present: Hollywood Icons , and Raoul Peck's I Am Not Your Negro (both 2016).
Audrey's If Onlys
It's long been rumoured that Hepburn appeared uncredited as an extra in William Wyler's Ben-Hur (1959). In fact, she was one of several celebrities who took a tour bus to the set, along with Kirk Douglas, Susan Hayward, Harry Belafonte and Jack Palance. But, while no one has managed to spot Hepburn in a crowd scene, more credible evidence exists linking her with a range of projects from her starlet days through to her twilight. Cinema Paradiso invites you to check out the following titles and imagine Audrey in the key roles.
Even while she was still an unknown, Hepburn was in demand. John Eldridge had sought her for the 1952 comedy Brandy For the Parson , but shooting delays led to Jean Lodge being cast in her place. The great Charlie Chaplin also considered Hepburn for ballerina Thereza Ambrose in Limelight (both 1952). But, while he was taken with her dancing, Chaplin felt she lacked the acting experience and plumped for non-dancer Claire Bloom instead. Problems with the costume convinced another screen pioneer, Cecil B. DeMille, to hire Anne Baxter rather than Hepburn to play Queen Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments (1956), while the same year saw George Stevens opt for Elizabeth Taylor for the role of Leslie Benedict in Giant , as Hepburn was considered too sophisticated for such a gutsy role.
On the other hand, Hepburn felt that Lady Brett Ashley in Henry King's take on Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises lacked decorum and Ava Gardner stepped into the breach. Similarly, she disapproved of the idea of playing a Japanese girl opposite Marlon Brando in Joshua Logan's Sayonara (both 1957) and Miiko Taka was cast in her stead. Undaunted, Logan sought Hepburn to play Nellie Forbush in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, South Pacific (1958), and the title role of his 1961 reworking of Marcel Pagnol's 1932 Marseilles waterfront drama, Fanny .
Otto Preminger was another director who long pursued Hepburn to no avail. He first lined her up for the title role in Saint Joan (1957), Graham Greene's adaptation of the George Bernard Shaw play about the trial of Joan of Arc. However, Hepburn passed and Jean Seberg not only took her place, but also picked up the leftovers when Hepburn turned down Preminger's version of Françoise Sagan's bestseller, Bonjour Tristesse (1958), and Eva Marie Saint was the beneficiary when Hepburn rejected the Kitty Fremont role opposite Paul Newman in Exodus (1960).
One of Hepburn's most daring proposals was a reunion with William Wyler on an adaptation of Edmond Rostand's play, L'Aiglon , in which she would play the Duc de Reichstadt, who was the son of Napoleon Bonaparte. Moreover, having already handed Jean Simmons the role of Varinia in Spartacus (1960), Hepburn would also later resist Stanley Kubrick's efforts to cast her as Empress Josephine opposite David Hemmings in his own biopic of the French emperor.
Vincente Minnelli would won an Oscar for his glorious MGM adaptation of Gigi (1958), which went ahead with Leslie Caron in the title role after Hepburn claimed she was too old to reprise the stage part that had helped make her name. She also felt that newcomer Millie Perkins should take the lead in George Stevens's The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), even though the journal makes mention of her uncle's execution and Anne's father, Otto Frank, had personally asked her to play his daughter. One suspects, however, that the emotions were still too raw for Hepburn to essay someone she regarded as her 'soul sister'.
Alfred Hitchcock was another director keen to work with Hepburn. She had expressed an interest in playing the dual roles of Judy and Madeleine in Vertigo (1958), but Hitch had followed his penchant for blondes and cast Kim Novak.Although he did try to talk her into playing Melanie Daniels in The Birds (1963) before wisely settling for Tippi Hedren.It was Hepburn who chose not to reunite with Blake Edwards by playing either Princess Dala in The Pink Panther (1963) or Lili Smith in Darling Lili (1970), with the roles respectively going to Claudia Cardinale and Edwards's wife, Julie Andrews, who also picked up the part of Jerusha in George Roy Hill's take on James Michener's Hawaii (1966), which Hepburn had refused for monetary reasons after it had been offered to her by Fred Zinnemann.
Any suggestion that Hepburn had lost interest in the 1960s is countered by her desire to play Mrs Robinson in Mike Nichols's epochal comedy, The Graduate (1967). Doris Day had famously denounced the picture for being smutty and retired from films shortly afterwards because Hollywood was no longer making her kind of movie. But Hepburn's decision to take a step backwards had more to do with personal reasons, as she finally ended her marriage to Mel Ferrer after Terence Young decided against letting them reprise their 1957 roles in his 1968 version of Mayerling . Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve were cast instead, which gave the French actress a notable double, as she and sister Françoise Dorléac had co-starred with Gene Kelly in Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967) after director Jacques Demy had failed to secure his dream team of Hepburn and Brigitte Bardot.
Perhaps the most unexpected title on this list of 'might have beens', however, is William Friedkin's adaptation of William Peter Blatty's horror classic, The Exorcist (1973). Hepburn was the first choice to play Chris MacNeil and negotiations appeared to be going well until she insisted on shooting her scenes in Rome. Bearing in mind this reluctance to leave Europe, Luchino Visconti offered Hepburn the chance to reunite with Burt Lancaster in Conversation Piece (1974). However, she felt the part of Marchioness Bianca Brumonti was too risqué and ceded it to Silvana Mangano.
However, Audrey Hepburn was never one to entertain regrets, as her family and ambassadorial roles came to mean much more to her than cinema and celebrity.
