Audrey Hepburn Biography / Pictures

Audrey Hepburn (4 May 1929(1929-05-04) – 20 January 1993) was a Dutch, Belgian actress and humanitarian.

Biography

Born in Brussels as Audrey Kathleen Ruston, Audrey spent her childhood chiefly in the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem, Netherlands during the Second World War (1939-1945). She studied ballet in Arnhem and then moved to London in 1948, where she studied drama and worked as a photographer's model. She appeared in a handful of European films before starring in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi. Audrey played the lead female role in Roman Holiday (1953), winning an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for her performance. She also won a Tony Award for her performance in Ondine (1954).

Audrey became one of the most successful film actresses in the world and performed with such notable leading men as Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, William Holden, Fred Astaire, Peter O'Toole, and Albert Finney. She won BAFTA Awards for her performances in The Nun's Story (1959) and Charade (1963), and received Academy Award nominations for Sabrina (1954), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and Wait Until Dark (1967).

Audrey Hepburn starred as Eliza Doolittle in the Warner Brothers blockbuster My Fair Lady (1964), becoming only the third actor to receive $1,000,000 for a film role. From 1968 to 1975 she took a break from film-making, mostly to spend more time with her two sons. In 1976 she starred opposite Sean Connery in Robin and Marian. In 1989 she made her last film appearance in Steven Spielberg's Always.

Her war-time experiences inspired her passion for humanitarian work, and although she had worked for UNICEF since the 1950s, during her later life, she dedicated much of her time and energy to the organization. From 1988 until 1992, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia. In 1992, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Audrey was married twice and had a son with each of her husbands, the actor Mel Ferrer and the psychiatrist Andrea Dotti. From 1980 until her death, she lived with the actor Robert Wolders. She died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Switzerland at the age of 63.

Audrey Hepburn was posthumously awarded the The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for her humanitarian work.

Audrey Hepburn received a posthumous Grammy Award for her spoken word recording, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales in 1994, and in the same year, won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement for Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, thereby becoming one of a few people to receive an Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony award. In 1999, she was ranked as the third greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.