Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Kathleen Hepburn (née Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress. Recognised as a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend from the Classical Hollywood cinema and was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List.

Born into an aristocratic family in Ixelles, Brussels, Hepburn spent parts of her childhood in Belgium, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. She attended boarding school in Kent from 1936 to 1939. With the outbreak of World War II, she returned to the Netherlands. During the war, Hepburn studied ballet at the Arnhem Conservatory, and by 1944 she was performing ballet to raise money to support the Dutch resistance. She studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam beginning in 1945 and with Marie Rambert in London from 1948.

Hepburn began performing as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions and then had minor appearances in several films. She rose to stardom in the romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953) alongside Gregory Peck, for which she became the first actress to win an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for a single performance. In that year, she also won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play for her performance in Ondine. Hepburn went on to star in a number of successful films, such as Sabrina (1954), with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden; Funny Face (1957), a musical in which she sang her own parts; the drama The Nun's Story (1959); the romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961); the thriller-romance Charade (1963), opposite Cary Grant; and the musical My Fair Lady (1964). In 1967, she starred in the thriller Wait Until Dark, receiving Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. After that role, Hepburn only occasionally appeared in films, one being Robin and Marian (1976) with Sean Connery. Her last recorded performances were in the 1990 documentary television series Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming. In 1994, Hepburn's contributions to a spoken-word recording titled Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales earned her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. She is one of few entertainers who have won competitive Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards. Hepburn won three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role. In recognition of her film career, she received BAFTA's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award and the Special Tony Award.

Later in life, Hepburn devoted much of her time to UNICEF, to which she had contributed since 1954. Between 1988 and 1992, she worked in some of the poorest communities of Africa, South America and Asia. In December 1992, Hepburn received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. A month later, she died of appendix cancer at her home in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland, at the age of 63.

Audrey Kathleen Ruston (later, Hepburn-Ruston) was born on 4 May 1929 at number 48 Rue Keyenveld in Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels, Belgium. She was known to her family as Adriaantje.

Hepburn's mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra (1900–1984), was a Dutch noblewoman. Ella was the daughter of Baron Aarnoud van Heemstra, who served as the mayor of Arnhem from 1910 to 1920 and as the governor of Dutch Guiana from 1921 to 1928, and Baroness Elbrig Willemine Henriette van Asbeck (1873–1939), a granddaughter of Count Dirk van Hogendorp. At age 19, she married Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford – an oil executive based in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, where the couple subsequently lived. Before divorcing in 1925, they had two sons, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander Quarles van Ufford (1920–1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (1924–2010).

Hepburn's father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889–1980), was a British subject born in Auschitz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. He was the son of Victor John George Ruston, who was of British and German-Austrian background, and Anna Juliana Franziska Karolina Wels, who was of German-Austrian origin and born in Kovarce. In 1923–1924, he was an Honorary British Consul in Semarang, Dutch East Indies and, prior to his marriage to Hepburn's mother, was married to Cornelia Bisschop, a Dutch heiress. Joseph later changed his surname to the more "aristocratic" double-barrelled Hepburn-Ruston, perhaps at Ella's insistence, as he mistakenly believed himself descended from James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.

Hepburn's parents were married in Batavia in 1926. At the time, Joseph worked for a trading company, but soon after the marriage, the couple moved to Europe, where he began working for a loan company; reportedly tin merchants MacLaine, Watson, and Company in London. After a year in London, they moved to Brussels, where he had been assigned to open a branch office. After three years spent traveling between Brussels, Arnhem, The Hague and London, the family settled in the suburban Brussels municipality of Linkebeek in 1932. Hepburn's early childhood was sheltered and privileged. Due to her father's job, the family travelled back and forth between three countries, enhancing her multinational background.

In the mid-1930s, Hepburn's parents recruited and collected donations for the British Union of Fascists (B.U.F). Ella met Adolf Hitler and wrote favourable articles about him for the B.U.F. Joseph left the family abruptly in 1935 after a "scene" in Brussels. He subsequently moved to London, where he became more deeply involved in the Fascist activity and never visited Hepburn abroad. That same year, Ella moved to her family's estate in Arnhem with her daughter; her sons, Alex and Ian, were sent to The Hague to live with relatives. Joseph wanted Hepburn to be educated in the United Kingdom, so in 1937, she was sent to live in Kent, where she, known as Audrey Ruston or "Little Audrey", was educated at a small private school in Elham. Her parents officially divorced the next year. Later in her life, she often spoke of the effect on a child of being "dumped" as "children need two parents"; she professed that her father's departure was "the most traumatic event of my life". In the 1960s, Hepburn renewed contact with her father after locating him in Dublin through the Red Cross; she supported him financially until his death although he remained emotionally detached.

After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Hepburn's mother moved her daughter back to Arnhem in the hope that, as during the First World War, the Netherlands would remain neutral and be spared a German attack. While there, Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945. She had begun taking ballet lessons during her last years at boarding school, and continued training in Arnhem under the tutelage of Winja Marova, becoming her "star pupil". After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn used the name Edda van Heemstra, because an "English-sounding" name was considered dangerous during the German occupation. Her family was profoundly affected by the occupation, with Hepburn later stating that "had we known that we were going to be occupied for five years, we might have all shot ourselves. We thought it might be over next week… six months… next year… that's how we got through".

In 1942, her uncle, Otto van Limburg Stirum (husband of her mother's older sister, Miesje), was executed in retaliation for an act of sabotage by the resistance movement; while he had not been involved in the act, he was targeted due to his family's prominence in Dutch society. These family events were the turning point in the attitude of Hepburn's mother, who had flirted with Nazism up to this point. Hepburn's half-brother Ian was deported to Berlin to work in a German labour camp, and her other half-brother Alex went into hiding to avoid the same fate.

After her uncle's death, Hepburn, Ella, and Miesje left Arnhem to live with her grandfather, Baron Aarnoud van Heemstra, in nearby Velp. Around that time Hepburn gave silent dance performances that reportedly raised money for the Dutch resistance effort. It was long believed that she participated in the Dutch resistance itself, but in 2016 the Airborne Museum 'Hartenstein' reported that after extensive research it had not found any evidence of such activities. A 2019 book by Robert Matzen provided evidence, based on Hepburn's personal statements, that she had supported the resistance by giving "underground concerts" to raise money, delivering the underground newspaper, and taking messages and food to downed Allied flyers hiding in the woodlands north of Velp. She also volunteered at a hospital that was the center of resistance activities in Velp, and, according to Hepburn, her family temporarily hid a British paratrooper in their home during the Battle of Arnhem. Matzen also claims that Hepburn carried messages for the Dutch Resistance, including to downed British paratroopers.

In addition to other traumatic events, she witnessed the transportation of Dutch Jews to concentration camps, later stating that "more than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on the train. I was a child observing a child."

After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse, and Arnhem was subsequently heavily damaged during Operation Market Garden. During the 1944–45 Dutch famine, the Germans hindered or reduced the already limited food and fuel supplies to civilians in retaliation for Dutch railway strikes that were held to disrupt the occupation. Like others, Hepburn's family resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits, a source of starchy carbohydrates; Dutch doctors provided recipes for using tulip bulbs throughout the famine. Suffering from the effects of malnutrition, after the war ended Hepburn became gravely ill with jaundice, anaemia, oedema, and a respiratory infection. In October 1945, a letter from Ella asking for help was received by Micky Burn, a former lover and British Army officer with whom she had corresponded while he was a prisoner of war in Colditz Castle. He sent back thousands of cigarettes, which she was able to sell on the black market and thus buy the penicillin which saved Hepburn's life. The Van Heemstra family's financial situation changed significantly through the occupation, during which time many of their properties (including their principal estate in Arnhem) were damaged or destroyed.