Audrey Hepburn (born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 - 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century. Redefining glamour with "elfin" features and a gamine waif-like figure that inspired designs by Hubert de Givenchy, she was inducted in the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame, and ranked, by the American Film Institute, as the third greatest female screen legend in the history of American cinema.
[>>]Source: WikipediaAudrey Hepburn (born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 - 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century. Redefining glamour with "elfin" features and a gamine waif-like figure that inspired designs by Hubert de Givenchy, she was inducted in the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame, and ranked, by the American Film Institute, as the third greatest female screen legend in the history of American cinema.
Born in Ixelles, a district of Brussels, Hepburn spent her childhood between Belgium, England and the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem during the Second World War. From 1939 on she studied ballet in Arnhem and after the war with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam. In 1948 she moved to London where she continued in ballet and performed as a chorus girl in various West End musical theatre productions. After appearing in several British films and starring in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi, Hepburn gained instant Hollywood stardom for playing the Academy Award-winning lead role in Roman Holiday (1953). Later performing in Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Charade (1963), My Fair Lady (1964) and Wait Until Dark (1967), Hepburn became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age who received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations and accrued a Tony Award for her theatrical performance in the 1954 Broadway play Ondine. Hepburn remains one of few entertainers who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.
She appeared in fewer films as her life went on, and devoted much of her later life to UNICEF. Her war-time struggles inspired her passion for humanitarian work and, although Hepburn had contributed to the organisation since the 1950s, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia in the late eighties and early nineties. In 1992, Hepburn was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. She died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Switzerland, aged 63, in 1993.
Early life
Audrey Hepburn was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston on 4 May 1929 on Rue Keyenveld in Ixelles, a municipality in Brussels in Belgium. Her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889-1980), was British, though born in Úžice, Bohemia to an English/Austrian father and Austrian mother. Ruston had earlier been married to Cornelia Bisschop, a Dutch heiress he met in the Dutch East Indies. Although born Ruston, he later double-barrelled the surname to the more "aristocratic" Hepburn-Ruston, mistakenly believing himself descended from James Hepburn, third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Her mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra (1900-1984), was a Dutch aristocrat and the daughter of Aarnoud van Heemstra, who was mayor of Arnhem from 1910 to 1920 and served as Governor of Suriname from 1921 to 1928. Ella's mother was Elbrig Willemine Henriette, Baroness van Asbeck (1873-1939), who was a granddaughter of Dirk van Hogendorp. At age nineteen, Ella had married the knight Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford, but they divorced in 1925. Hepburn had two half-brothers from this marriage: Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford (1920-1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (1924-2010).
Ruston and van Heemstra married in Batavia in September 1926. They moved back to Europe, to Ixelles in Belgium, where Hepburn was born in 1929. In January 1932 the family moved on to Linkebeek, a nearby Brussels municipality. Although born in Belgium, Hepburn had British citizenship through her father. Because of her mother's family in the Netherlands and her father's job with a British company, the family often travelled between the three countries. With her multinational background, she had a talent for languages and went on to speak fluent English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian. Hepburn was a playful and imaginative child who discovered a passion for ballet by the age of 5, loved to read and was nicknamed "Monkey Puzzle" by her father.
Childhood and adolescence in World War II
Hepburn's parents were members of the British Union of Fascists in the mid-1930s, with her father becoming a true Nazi sympathiser. After her mother discovered him in bed with the nanny of her children, Hepburn's father left the family abruptly. In the 1960s, Hepburn would finally locate him again in Dublin through the Red Cross. Although he remained emotionally detached, his daughter remained in contact and supported him financially until his death.
After Joseph had left in 1935, Ella van Heemstra took her children home to Arnhem, though her sons spent much time with their father in The Hague. Ella and Audrey moved to Kent in 1937, where Hepburn was educated at a tiny independent girls' school in the village of Elham, run by the sisters Rigden and then attended by about 14 children. In September 1939, her mother relocated her back home in Arnhem, in the belief that, like in the First World War, the Netherlands would remain neutral and be spared a German attack. Whilst there, Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945 where, in addition to the standard school curriculum, she trained in ballet with Winja Marova. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, a derivative of her mother's name Ella, because an "English sounding" name was considered dangerous during the German occupation. In 1942, her uncle Otto van Limburg Stirum, husband of Ella's older sister Miesje, was executed in retaliation for a sabotage by the resistance movement, while her half-brother Jan was deported to Berlin to work in a German labour camp (Alex went into hiding to avoid the same fate). After this, Ella, Miesje and Audrey moved in with Baron van Heemstra in nearby Velp. During her wartime struggles, Hepburn suffered from malnutrition, developed acute anĉmia, respiratory problems, and œdema. Hepburn, in a retrospective interview, commented, "I have memories. 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 to the train. I was a child observing a child."
Notwithstanding such strife, by 1944, Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She had secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance. "The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performances," she remarked. After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse and Arnhem was subsequently devastated by Allied artillery fire under Operation Market Garden. During the Dutch famine that followed in the winter of 1944, the Germans had blocked the resupply routes of the Netherlands' already-limited food and fuel supplies as retaliation for railway strikes that were held to hinder German occupation. People starved and froze to death in the streets; Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits. One way that Hepburn passed the time was by drawing; some of her childhood artwork can be seen today. When the country was liberated, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration trucks followed. Hepburn said in an interview that she fell ill from putting too much sugar in her oatmeal and eating an entire can of condensed milk. Hepburn's war-time experiences sparked her devotion to UNICEF, an international humanitarian organisation, in her later career.
[<<]This text is based on a article from the open encyclopedia Wikipedia and stands under GNU license for free documentation. On Wikipedia there is List of the authors Available. Image: Trailer screenshot
