Biography: Audrey Hepburn

 

Birthdate and Place:

Audrey Hepburn was born May 4, 1929 in a large and pleasantly secluded house in the outer suburbs of Brussels.  She was baptized Edda ( after her mothers Dutch ancestors), Kathleen (after her fathers putative Irish ones) Hepburn-Ruston.

Birth Date and Place:
Audrey Hepburn was born May 4, 1929 in a large and pleasantly secluded house in the outer suburbs of Brussels. She was baptized Edda (after her mother’s Dutch ancestors) Kathleen (after her father’s putative Irish ones) Hepburn-Ruston.

 Family Members:

Audrey’s family members were her mother Ella van Heemstra. On her mother’s side of the family she was a Dutch and related to a long line of aristocratic landowners, high-ranking military officers, public servants and royal courtiers.  Her father Joseph Victor Anthony Hepburn-Ruston was a British financial advisor.  Her grandmother Frau Anna Van Foregger who was Audrey’s paternal Grandmother.  Her two brothers, Arnoud Robert Alexander Quarles van Ufford and Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford who were not much close to Audrey.

 Childhood and School Life:

When Audrey was 6 years old her father walked out on her mother and her in 1935. Audrey loved her father and her parents’ divorce was the first big blow in her life.  Her mother took her children home to Arnhem after the separation.  In 1937, Audrey and her mother moved to Ket, where she was educated at a tiny independent girl’s school in the village in Elham.  After two years her mother decided to relocate back home in Arnhem, in the belief that the Netherlands would remain neutral and be spared a German attack during World War 1.  There she attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939-1945 where, in addition the standard school curriculum, she was trained in ballet with Winja Marova.

 Hobbies, Interests, and Activities:

Audrey liked to take ballet lessons.  She started at a Russian Dancing school in Amsterdam. Audrey’s dancing lessons were brought to an end when the schools municipal subsidy was drastically cut.  After the liberation, Audrey went to a ballet school in London on a scholarship and later began a modeling career.  As a model, she was graceful and, it seemed, she had found her niche in life.

After being spotted modeling by a producer, she was signed to a bit part in the European film “Dutch in Seven Lessons” in 1948.  She liked acting a lot and it definitely was her calling.  During her acting career she still pursued her love for dancing.

Anecdotes:
Audrey visited the Netherlands on a Dutch plane.  Bring Audrey home to the Netherlands was the worst thing the baroness could have done.  It was the start of WW1 and she was between the battles.  The opening months of the offensive it was hard to believe that war would overlap into their country with its long established ties of trade and blood with the older, pre-Hitlerite Germany.  Audrey showed an early liking to dancing in 1939, just before her tenth birthday during the war.  Daily life in Arnhem was calm; though increasingly tense the following year, during the period known officially as “the phony war”.  As Audrey danced in the studio she could hear distant sounds of gunfire, Audrey shot up over 5 feet 6 inches on a diet that was insufficient to sustain such accelerated development, and her slow descent to malnutrition began.  She became anemic and her sluggish bloodstream, failing to disparities, silted them up in her lower limbs so that he legs and feet became painfully swollen with edema.  Dancing was a thing of the past.  Audrey’s mother had a friend, Michael Burn who was captured in the naval commando raid on St Nazaire.  Fast forward to the liberation, Audrey was critically ill.  There was a new wonder drug “Penicillin” but was hard to come by in Netherlands.  Michael sent cartons of Cigarettes which at the time cost a lot of money.  Ella sold the carton of cigarettes and raised enough money to buy the medicine and save Audrey’s life.

 Career:

After being spotted by an ABPC casting director in Sauce Piquante, the unknown Hepburn appeared in minor roles in the 1951 films: One Wild Oat, Laughter in Paradise, Young Wives Tale, and The Lavender Hill.  Her first major supporting role in Thorold Dickinson’s, “The Secret People”, in which she played a ballerina and performed all her dancing.  Hepburn was offered a small role in the film being shot in English and French(Monte Carlo Baby).  Audrey was noticed during the filming of Monte Carlo and played the main character Gigi.  In the Italian-set Roman Holiday (1953).  Hepburn had her first starring role as Princess Ann, an incognito European princess.  Following her success in Roman Holiday, she starred in Billy Wilder’s, “Sabrina” (1954).  Natasha Rostova in “War and Peace” (1956),  Funny Face (1957), She played Sister Luke in “The Nuns Story” (1959),  Green Mansion (1959),  Unforgiven (1960),  Blake Edwards “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961),  The Children’s Hour (1961),  Charde (1963),  Paris when it Sizzles (1964),  My Fair Lady (1964),  How to steal a Million (1966).

Reason for Fame:
While she was taking ballet lessons in Amsterdam she appeared in her first film in 1948.  Audrey then traveled to London to study ballet at Ballet Rambert.  She supported herself with part-time modeling.  Her career as being a professional Ballerina was fading because of her height and poor nutrition.  Audrey was spotted by an ABPC in the musical Sauce Piovuante, which was the start of her career.

Later Life/Old Age:
From 1980 until her death, Hepburn lived romantically involved with Dutch actor Robert Wolders.  She met Wolders through a friend in the later stage of her marriage to Dotti.  When the divorce from Dotti finalized, Wolders and Hepburn started their lives together, although they never married.  In 1989, she called the nine years she had spent with him the happiest years of her life.

Death:

Upon her Somalia to Switzerland in late September 2992, Hepburn began suffering from abdominal pains.  On November1, doctors performed a laparoscopy and discovered abdominal cancer that had spread to her appendix, a very rare form of cancer.  On the evening of January 20, 1993, at her home in Tolochenaz, vaud, Switzerland, Hepburn died in her sleep of appendiceal cancer.  Hepburn was interred at the Tolochenaz cemetery atop a hill overlooking a village.