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Audrey Hepburn (4 May 1929(1929-05-04) – 20 January
1993) was an actress and humanitarian. Born in Brussels as Audrey
Kathleen Ruston, Hepburn lived in Arnhem in the Netherlands during her
childhood and for the duration of the Second World War. She studied
ballet there and then moved to London in 1948, where she studied drama
and worked as a photographer's model. After making a few films and
appearing in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi, Hepburn played the lead 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). Over the
next several years, she was one of the most successful film actresses in
the world, and performed with some of Hollywood's most notable leading
men, including Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper and
Fred Astaire, with whom she
danced in Funny Face (1957). She won BAFTA Awards for her performances
in The Nun's Story (1959) and Charade (1963), and received Academy Award
nominations for her work in Sabrina (1954), Breakfast at Tiffany's
(1961) and Wait Until Dark (1967). She also played Eliza Doolittle in
the film version of My Fair Lady (1964), though the vocals were dubbed
by Marni Nixon. 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. Hepburn 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.[1][2][3] She was
posthumously awarded the The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences for her humanitarian work. She 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. |
