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.
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.
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.
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.
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.