Audrey Hepburn: Life and Legacy

Audrey Hepburn: Life and Legacy 

[Music] audrey hepburn is an iconic figure known to most for her brilliant acting radiant beauty and style endless efforts for children in need as well as her charm and grace [Music] audrey hepburn was born as audrey kathleen rustin on may 4th 1929 in brussels belgium her mother baroness ella van heemstra was a dutch noblewoman while her father joseph victor anthony rustin was born in bohemia to english

and austrian parents although she was born in belgium audrey had a british citizenship through her father and attended school in england as a child in 1939 however at the onset of world war ii her mother now single after her father left the family when she was six years old decided to move audrey back to the netherlands due to the fact that she thought a neutral country may be safer than england during the war unfortunately this was not the case and audrey lived in a war zone for most of her childhood throughout world war ii audrey endured

hardships in a nazi-occupied holland but still managed to attend school and take ballet lessons europe lane ruins and children were scattered in the streets and and were starving during this time her mother temporarily changed audrey’s name to eddie van heemstra worried that her birth name would reveal her british heritage we were occupied we had a german occupation in holland and little by little there was obviously very little food and the winters were long and all children started to suffer from malnutrition

so god knows i know the value of food and i was suffering from a rather a high degree of malnutrition when the war ended but my life was never in danger my health might might have been impaired had it gone on her family was profoundly affected by the occupation with some of her family members being executed because i was 10 when the war broke out when when i mean in fact i was in england when the war broke out i was alone in england my mother brought me back to holland where they were living and uh this was in september in may the

germans marched in to holland they had first marched into poland and holland was next there’s so many images that will never go away such as we were on the radio we were told to stay indoors the country had been invaded to not even appear at the windows to close the curtains and so forth telling me that of course i was behind the curtains and i saw these german tanks come in for hours marching driving and the holland fell after five days because it’s a small country with a small army and they fought very bravely but there was

no way of holding back the german army and all of that is history now then followed five years and of course you say oh my god isn’t that terrible five years of german occupation which it was but a child is a child as a child you live by the day obviously it was much worse for my mother in a certain sense and for my family and just went to school except that i was shoved into a dutch school right away not knowing a word of dutch because my mother was worried about this child speaking english in the streets and germans all around and

she thought that was rather dangerous so that was a traumatic experience to end up in a huge classroom not knowing what word that was being said and every time i opened my mouth everybody roaring would laugh that’s just great at that age but it’s a great way to learn a language you know i can speak then little by little yes there was a knock on the door and they took my uncle away who six months later was shot and another uncle two and my brothers went underground my uncles were the first hostages to be shot in holland and it

was actually the turning point because from that day on an underground was formed because for the first few months we didn’t know quite what had happened we thought perhaps we’re just going to be nicely occupied and you know our freedom would be this and that’s when really the hard times started because that’s when so many reprisals were made and so many people were shot and so many people were rounded up and imprisoned and after the first few months all jews had to be had to wear yellow stars and they started being rounded up and

taken away in trucks and i go to the station with my mother to to take a train to the next city and i’d see cattle trucks filled with jews picking up more was standing around us and i remember so well a little boy little blonde with my mother to explain all this to me we did yet then not yet know that they were going to their death we’d been told they were going to be taken to special camps and why it was very hard for me to understand because i was 11 or something you know but those images have never never left

me but neither have the good ones i had a marvelous family with a great sense of humor but you must also remember that had we known the first six months of the war that we were going to be occupied for five years we might all have shot ourselves we thought it’d be over next week well you know we get good news for underground radio it’ll be over in six months or next year and that’s how we got through those five years and indeed did get worse and worse and worse and finally in the last year civilians were totally

just tolerated but ignored there were no provisions made there’s no food in the shops and that last winter i mean nothing grows in the winter you can keep carrots and potatoes for just so long and some turnips we were running out of those and that was really uh very very hard after the war ended in 1945 hepburn moved with her mother and siblings to amsterdam where she began ballet training under sonia gaskill a leading figure in dutch ballet and russian teacher olga tarasova hepburn moved to london after accepting

a ballet scholarship with ballet rambet she supported herself with part-time work as a model and dropped bruston from her surname after she was told by rambit that despite her talent her height and weak constitution due to being malnourished during the war would make the status of prima ballerina unattainable she decided to concentrate on acting during her early 20s audrey studied acting and worked as a model and dancer she also began to get some small film roles credited as audrey hepburn appearing in her first film aged 18

dutch in seven lessons as a result of her multinational background and travelling with her family she learned five languages dutch and english from her parents and later varying degrees of french spanish and italian while making a film in monte carlo audrey caught the eye of french novelist colette who felt that hepburn would be ideal for the title role in the stage adaptation of her novel gigi despite her limited experience hepburn was cast and went on to end praising reviews when the play opened on broadway in 1951.

her next project took her to rome where she starred in her first major american film roman holiday in 1953. audrey utterly charmed audiences and won an academy award for best actress hepburn returned to the stage early in 1954 as a water nymph in ondine co-starring mel ferreira whom she married later that year she won a tony award for her performance which turned out to be her last on broadway she continued to enchant movie audiences in romantic comedies such as sabrina in 1954 [Music] and funny face in 1957

as well as in major dramatic pictures such as war and peace in 1956 than the nun story in 1959 she continued acting on the big screen and in 1961 went on to portray the iconic character of holly in the world famous breakfast at tiffany’s after appearing in many more films she starred in the thriller wait until dark in 1967 receiving academy award golden globe and bafta nominations [Music] hepburn had two miscarriages one in march 1955 and another in 1959 after she fell from a horse during the filming of the unforgiven

when she became pregnant for the third time she took a year off work to prevent another miscarriage she gave birth to a son on july 17 in 1960 named sean drain hepburn ferrer sadly she had two more miscarriages in 1965 and 1967. audrey went into semi-retirement having decided to focus on her family and wanting to spend more time with her children having divorced her husband in 1968 she married an italian psychiatrist and chose to focus on her family rather than her career going on to have another son on the 8th

of february 1970 named luca dottie she wanted to have a third child but had another miscarriage in 1974 and did not return to acting until 1976 when she co-starred in the nostalgic love story robin and marion her marriage lasted 13 years before it ended in 1982 she appeared in a few more films and in 1988 began a new career as a special goodwill ambassador for united nations children’s fund she devoted herself to humanitarian work visiting famine-stricken villages in south america africa and asia by visiting areas of

conflict she was constantly putting her life in danger what was that however all she cared about was helping the children and raising awareness i’ve been you know so privileged to be given this opportunity to do something for children and it actually was a great relief for me because i’ve sat in front of television so often and been frustrated or seen photographs or read articles about ethiopia and i’ve been so pent up with that feeling which most of us have is you can’t do anything and the idea that now i can however little is a great relief and

i went very eagerly she received many awards for all of the humanitarian work that she had done and in december 1992 was awarded with the united states highest civilian award the presidential medal of freedom my father leaving us left me insecure for life perhaps i do think there are things that you know that experiences in childhood form you for the rest of your life that’s also why i’m so concerned with children today not just that they’re starving and so forth but children that are surrounded by violence and horror what

this is going to do to them from 1980 hepburn was in a relationship with dutch actor robert walders after meeting him through a friend during the later years of her second marriage in 1989 she called the nine years she had spent with him the happiest years of her life and stated that she considered them married just not officially upon returning from somalia to switzerland in late september 1992 hepburn began suffering from abdominal pain while initial medical tests in switzerland had inconclusive results it was soon discovered at a medical

center in los angeles in early november that audrey had a rare form of abdominal cancer having grown slowly over several years the cancer had metastasis as a thin coating over her small intestine after surgery hepburn began chemotherapy audrey and her family returned home to switzerland to celebrate her last christmas as she was still recovering from surgery she was unable to fly on commercial aircraft her longtime friend fashion designer hubert de giovanti arranged for socialite rachel lambert melon to send her private gulfstream jet

filled with flowers to take hepburn from los angeles to geneva she spent her last days in hospice care at her home in tolochen occasionally well enough to take walks in her garden but gradually became more confined to bedrest on the evening of the 20th of january 1993 audrey died in her sleep at home audrey hepburn’s influence as a style icon continues several decades after the height of her acting career in the 1950s and 1960s after her death she became increasingly admired with magazines frequently advising readers on how to get her look

and fashion designers using her as inspiration in 2004 hepburn was named the most beautiful woman of all time as well as being voted the most stylish brit of all time in 2015. the american film institute named her as one of the greatest female stars of all time and has received countless awards she is still known and loved to this day and remains an icon decades later [Music] you