Audrey Hepburn – Vida, Carreira, Humanitarismo, Dicas e Curiosidades!

Audrey Hepburn – Vida, Carreira, Humanitarismo, Dicas e Curiosidades! 

 [Music] Hi, it’s Luiz here on Café com Leite, and it’s been a long time since I’ve said this! Wow, after four months of theater, we’re back here on the channel with lots of new content, formats, and unreleased content, and there’s going to be a lot of good stuff. And we’re back with the microphone! This is very cool! During this time we were off YouTube, but we were on Instagram, so don’t forget to follow us, we have content every day! And we also launched on March 8th, in honor of International Women’s Day, our

e-book “30 Women in Cinema,” which was made with a lot of love by all of us on the Café com Leite Cinema team. We talk about women who have marked the history of cinema, both in front of and behind the cameras. And today our return is also very special; we’re going to be honoring Happy Bird, who is a great inspiration, one of the biggest reasons I fell in love with cinema.

 It’s coming out on May 3rd, and Audrey was born on May 4th, 1929, and this year also marks 30 years since she passed away, which we’re going to talk about.  Quite a bit here about life and career, plus movie recommendations and trivia. So grab your coffee or your favorite drink and let’s talk about cinema. One of the main sources for this video is Helena Coan’s 2020 audio documentary, and I’ll mention it a few times.

So, I’ll talk about the documentary… And you already know which documentary I’m talking about. Audrey Catlin Happy Birdston was born on May 4, 1929, in Belgium, but she moved to England at a young age. So she had British nationality. Audrey’s mother was a Dutch Baroness, and her father was an English banker who was a fascist.

 Her mother also sympathized with Nazism; she even wrote several articles for magazines praising the regime that was rising to power. Audrey’s parents divorced, and her father completely abandoned them both when she was six years old. This is constantly discussed in the documentary, highlighting how much she suffered and how it left lasting scars on her.

 It also made her a very insecure person. Her father went to London and joined the group…  The Blackshirts were a British fascist party led by Oswald Mosley, who even appears in the series Big Blinders, played by Samplefly, when the war broke out in ’39. So, three years after that abandonment, Audrey and her mother left England and went to Holland because her mother thought there would be a lot of bombing.

 So she got scared and took her to Holland. She even changed her name from Audrey to her during this period so as not to arouse suspicion that she was British and risk any risk. It was in Holland that Audrey started doing ballet, which she always said she wanted to be a ballerina, it was her biggest dream. In a few months, the worst happened: the Nazis invaded Holland.

 This was undoubtedly the worst phase of Audrey’s life. She and her mother lived in great precariousness. They had to live almost all the time in the basement because the houses were constantly targets of gunfire. In addition, she saw several relatives, uncles and cousins, being taken away and even killed during this period. She also gave dance performances at night for resistance groups, all in secret; at night nobody could see her.

Everyone would applaud when it was over, just smiling. The audio and her mother even went hungry, especially in the winter; there was very little food, and sometimes there was n’t any left. It was because of this—this lack of nutrition, anemia, and various other problems—that she was so thin. She never weighed more than 50 kilos for the rest of her life, even though she was 1.70 meters tall.

 So she was very thin for her height. When the war ended, she continued dancing in England, but due to malnutrition and various health problems, she could no longer dance the same way, and she also had more difficulty learning new techniques. The younger girls were able to learn and do them faster. So, as a way to earn money, she started acting.

 She said she didn’t want to be an actress; she wanted to be a ballerina, but to earn money and have a job, she acted in theater and did some parts in films. Her first film appearance was in a Dutch documentary called Dust in Seven Lessons in 1948, and it was during the filming of Monte Carlo Baby in 1951, when she was filming in the south of F

rance, that she met…  The writer Colette invited her to star in the Broadway adaptation of her book Gigi. Then, a short time later, director William Williams, who was searching for new actresses in England, also discovered Audrey and invited her to be the protagonist of the film that changed her life, Roman Holiday. Because of this film, so early in her career, Audrey won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Actress.

Now let’s talk a little about style and beauty standards, since Audrey was one of the greatest references in fashion history, in cinema, and everything else. Audrey had a great partnership and a friendship of many years with Wilber de Ivenchy, the creator of the clothing brand.

 This partnership began during the filming of Sabrina, and the story of how they met is very funny because on the day they met, the giant thought that the person visiting him was Katherine Happy Bird, probably because he said she was Miss Rap Brand without mentioning her first name. Katherine was already super famous, and Audrey was just starting out; she wasn’t so well-known.

  Even then, when she arrived, he was like, ” But Audrey Hepburn was so wonderful, so charismatic, that she managed to win him over.” He designed the costumes for Sabrina, and he made a whole bunch of other dresses and costumes for her. They really created a brand, a style out there. Dream H

appy Bird… When Audrey arrived in Hollywood, she came to break standards because her style was seen as more accessible. Although she was super chic and elegant, it was a very minimalist and simple style: super short haircuts, ballet flats, low shoes, pants, t-shirts, you know, it’s super basic, it’s minimalist. So it was a new beauty standard, and every beauty standard in itself is problematic, of course.

But she managed to reach a group of women who didn’t identify with those curvy bodies, with the jewelry, the glitter, high heels, that hair that needs all that work, needs hair tools, a brush, in short, it needs more work, which is what most actresses of the time presented. But as I said, every beauty standard is problematic, and that thinness was, and still is, extremely problematic, and Audrey knew that.

 She didn’t like it becoming something, you know, a reference, because Audrey was like that, not because she wanted to be.  But because she went hungry when she was a child, and so in Helena’s documentary we hear audio saying that she didn’t like being so tall, she wanted to have smaller feet, she wanted to have a smaller nose, she wanted to be blonde.

 So, no beauty standard is realistic. But aside from this issue of beauty standards, what the audio brought was something very unique. She had such a unique, particular essence, and that’s what made her a remarkable figure even today. She’s mesmerizing, but not in a sensual or mysterious way. In fact, she’s the opposite.

 We feel close to her; she’s super intimate, super open. This is because of her personality and also the roles she played. In the documentary about director Peter Bodanovich, he comments here that during Hollywood’s golden age, actresses played roles that reflected their own personalities. I don’t totally agree because it makes us have the illusion that those people were real on screen and not characters that were constructed.

 But thinking about Audre, she brought characteristics of her own, which were at the same time being super elegant, chic, and powerful, and on the other hand, playful, ironic, and fun. And thinking like that, analyzing the context of her life… From her, it’s clear that this first aspect of elegance and everything else comes from her parents, right? Her mother was a Baroness, she had that family background and so on.

Furthermore, the fact that she did ballet for many years, and ballerinas are people with great posture and elegance, it’s really this type of behavior that comes from ballet, and she was very dedicated. Certainly, she absorbed these characteristics. On the other hand, her childhood and adolescence were taken away by the war.

When all that ended, she chose to enjoy life, to enjoy freedom as much as possible. This brought out this more youthful, cheerful side of her, happy to be alive. And the combination of these two sides that someone presented so beautifully to the world… Speaking now of some of Audrey’s last films, it’s somewhat symbolic.

 And the very last film, the production of My Fair Lady, a  1964 musical, had an ending that left Audrey very sad because what happened was that Audrey took many singing lessons to be able to sing in the film, and after everything, after all the production, after she had sung and everything else, the studio decided to dub it.

  All the songs she sang, as I mentioned before, dealt with issues of self-esteem and insecurity. So this episode hurt her a lot. Three years later, Audrey made ” Wait Until Dark,” a 1967 film that I ‘ll talk about in a moment, where she plays a blind woman. After this film, she withdrew from Hollywood for 10 years to take care of her children and be with her family.

 This was a shock to everyone because she was at the peak of her career, she was extremely famous, one of the most beloved actresses of the moment, always called upon to star in various films, but she chose to prioritize her family. And when we see her past and everything she went through with her family when she was young, we perfectly understand the reason.

 Now, the last film Audrey participated in was “Always” from 1989 by Spielberg, where she plays an angel. I’ll talk briefly about her marriages; I won’t go too deeply into relationship gossip, but just to mention the men who were part of her life: she was first married to the actor and producer Mel Ferrer; they l

ived together for more than…  They were together for 10 years, they loved each other very much, but ended up divorcing in ’69. She married the Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dortmu, who cheated on Audrey a lot, and it was very ugly because the news came out, you know, there were photos of him with other women, and once again that fear, that insecurity, that fear of being abandoned because of her father, all of that, you know, many triggers, and that made Audrey very, very bad during that period, and it was a very heavy phase because she was living in Rome, she went there to be with him, to

stop him. He was very focused on her because she had just left Hollywood, so everyone was looking for her, and so on. She also suffered a lot from anxiety, anyway, it was a very difficult time. They were together for more than 10 years, but ended up divorcing around 1980. Then she met Robbie Roads, and they started a relationship.

 They never got married, but he was her companion until the end of her life, and according to reports, they were very happy and had a lot of fun together. Humanitarianism and the end of her life: Audrey’s humanitarian life began when she…  It was at a UNICEF event that her cousin asked her to say something, to give a speech about what she went through during the war.

 It so happened that Jean Grant, who was the head of UNICEF at the time, was in the audience. After the event, he invited her to be a full-time UNICEF Ambassador. UNICEF was very important in Audi’s life. When the war ended, UNICEF and the Red Cross went there to distribute food and supplies to all the people who were trapped in their homes.

 So, after all that, she became an Ambassador and spent years traveling to many countries, visiting and getting to know the places and people who needed help. One of the most important things was the number of interviews and speeches she gave, because every time she appeared asking for help and funding, UNICEF managed to raise tens of millions of dollars to help fight hunger.

 It saddened her that even in the 80s and 90s, hunger still existed, that children were still starving. For her, that was unacceptable, and it remains unacceptable today. So, audio and  She continued helping tirelessly until the end of her life in the early 90s. She ended up getting sick, but she didn’t tell anyone and didn’t do anything about it, she just continued living her life until it got worse.

 And then the cancer was discovered, but it was too late. She passed away on January 20, 1993, at 30 years old, surrounded by her friends and family and feeling very loved. Interesting fact: In 2017, the script that Audi used for Breakfast at Tiffany’s was sold for 2.7 million reais. The script has scenes that didn’t make it into the film and has Audrey’s notes.

 This is the kind of thing that if I were a billionaire, if I were a Roy, I would definitely buy it without hesitation. Number two is that there’s going to be a movie about Audi with Rumney Mara, who I later realized really looks a lot like her, and it’s going to be directed by Luca Guadalupe, whom I love passionately, all his films.

 So I believe and have a lot of faith that it will be a good movie, and I hope it is, but so far there’s no other information about this movie yet. Number three, the most famous movie we have…  It’s clear that she’s the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” doll, but few people know that the role of Holly was actually meant for Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn’s PR team wouldn’t let her do it, since she was supposed to be a “lady of the night.” So they said, “It’s better if you do n’t do it.” There’s even a video about Marilyn Monroe on the channel; I’ll leave it in the description. Audio number 4: ” And there was a pet servant called Pippim; he was in the production of the 1959 film ‘The Flower That Didn’t Die’ ( Audio number 5).

 She’s part of the select group of egods, meaning she’s won an MTV Video Music Award, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, and in addition, she also has a Golden Globe.” For film recommendations, I decided to bring three films that I love, Darwin, and that aren’t her most famous, to this video. I think they ‘re very good. I remembered that I have the DVDs of all of them from the time I bought DVDs.

 I first met her in “Happy Burns,” when I bought DVDs. First, “Infamous.” “Infamous” is an LGBT-themed film made in 1961. This means that at that time there was a lot of censorship going on in Hollywood.  Regarding the Reis Code, those who are students in my film history course already know what the Reis Code is, but basically it was a super censorship that lasted from the 1930s until the end of the 1960s.

 It was a series of things that couldn’t appear in films, from sex and drugs to absurd places, including interracial relationships and romantic relationships. And of course,  homosexual relationships were also forbidden. This film, directed by William Williams, was made during this period in film history, and Shirley Mack Leme plays two teachers and owners of a girls’ boarding school.

One day, one of the students accuses the teachers of being in a romantic relationship. This film, which I already have in  my head, is a list of things that make us angry because children lie, because some people hunt them down, and so on. This accusation triggers a series of problems in the lives of these women because the parents start taking the girls out of school, and they start losing everything.

 A detail I discovered while researching for this video is that this film was based on a play, and the play was…  Based on a true story that happened in Scotland, I don’t know what happened in the real-life story, if the women actually had a relationship, but in the film they didn’t. However, Shirley’s character was indeed in love with Audi’s character, so it’s not reciprocal.

 But we do have a lesbian character in 1961, but it’s treated very subtly. It’s a very subtle thing because of censorship; the director was certainly very afraid of blocking it in a film. I found a very cool article that talks about this film; I ‘ll leave the link below because there are many factors to be analyzed.

We could make a video just about this film, and if you’re interested, even comment below. Charade is a 1963 film that I love. It’s a Hitchcockian film; it’s a mix of suspicious characters, it’s crazy. The story is about a woman who’s traveling, and when she returns, her husband has disappeared. There’s no furniture left in the house, nothing left.

The man took all the money from the bank account, and a lot of people start looking for her, thinking she took the money.  A lot of suspects and you don’t know who to believe, sometimes you don’t even know if you believe her. You don’t know what you don’t know, you don’t want to believe it. It’s very, very cool.

 Finally, as I said before, “A Flash in the Dark,” the 1967 film, which was the last one she made before taking a 10-year break from Hollywood. In this film, Audio plays a blind woman, and it’s another very cool plot twist because her husband accidentally took a doll that was full of drugs, and then the criminals who, I don’t know, owned the doll, find out the address and go after it to get the doll.

 The suspense is very well constructed because the men don’t know she’s blind, so they go there all prepared, and they hide when I wanted them to. It’s very interesting because they all stay hidden, and she just walks right past, like everything’s fine. It’s a very, very good movie, well worth watching. I hope you enjoyed this video that I made with a lot of affection because I’m passionate about Audio, her story, and also because she’s the one who made me fall in love with cinema.

 I watched her films when I was very young, like a child, still dating, so  Don’t forget to like and subscribe to the channel, follow us on Instagram where we post every day, and also subscribe to our bi- weekly newsletter which is full of news and tips, especially on Friday mornings. A kiss and see you in the next video! [Music]