Audrey Hepburn Biography 2

Early life

Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston^[4] on Keienveldstraat (Dutch) / Rue Keyenveld (French) in Elsene / Ixelles, a municipality in Brussels,Belgium, she was the only child of the Englishman Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston^[5] and his second wife, the former Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat, who was a daughter of a former governor of Dutch Guiana^[5], and who spent her childhood in the Huis Doorn manor house outside Doorn, which was subsequently the residence in exile of Wilhelm II, German Emperor.

Her father later prepended the surname of his maternal grandmother, Kathleen Hepburn, to the family's and her surname becameHepburn-Ruston.^[5] She had two half-brothers, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford, by her mother's first marriage to a Dutch nobleman, Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford.^[5]

She was a descendant of King Edward III of England^[6] and of Mary Queen of Scots' consort, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell,^[5] from whom Katharine Hepburn may also have descended.^[7] This also made her related to other notable distant cousins including Humphrey Bogart and Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Hepburn's father's job with a British insurance company meant the family travelled often betweenBrussels, England, and The Netherlands. From 1935 to 1938, Hepburn attended a boarding school for girls in Elham Kent.

In 1935, her parents divorced and her father, a Nazi sympathizer,^[8] left the family.^[9] Both parents were members of the British Union of Fascists in the mid-1930s according to Unity Mitford, a friend of Ella van Heemstra and a follower of Adolf Hitler.^[10]

She later called her father's abandonment the most traumatic moment of her life. Years later, she located him in Dublin through the Red Cross. Although he remained emotionally detached, she stayed in contact with him and supported him financially until his death.^[11]

In 1939, her mother moved her and her two half-brothers to their grandfather's home in Arnhem in the Netherlands. Ella believed the Netherlands would be safe from German attack. Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945, where she trained in ballet along with the standard school curriculum. In 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. During the Nazi occupation, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents because an 'English sounding' name was considered dangerous. This was never her legal name. The name Edda was a version of her mother's name Ella.^[12]

By 1944, Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance. She later said, "The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performances."^[13] After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse, and Arnhem was subsequently devastated by Allied artillery fire that was part of Operation Market Garden. During the Dutch famine that followed, over the winter of 1944, the Germans confiscated the Dutch people's limited food and fuel supply for themselves. 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.^[8][14]

Hepburn's uncle and her mother's cousin were shot in front of Hepburn for being part of the Resistance. Hepburn's half-brother Ian van Ufford spent time in a German labour camp. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed acute anemia, respiratory problems, andoedema.^[15] In 1991, Hepburn said "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."^{[citation needed]}

Hepburn also noted the similarities between herself and Anne Frank: "I was exactly the same age as Anne Frank. We were both ten when war broke out and fifteen when the war finished. I was given the book in Dutch, in galley form, in 1946 by a friend. I read it – and it destroyed me. It does this to many people when they first read it but I was not reading it as a book, as printed pages. This was my life. I didn't know what I was going to read. I've never been the same again, it affected me so deeply." "We saw reprisals. We saw young men put against the wall and shot and they'd close the street and then open it and you could pass by again. If you read the diary, I've marked one place where she says 'five hostages shot today'. That was the day my uncle was shot. And in this child's words I was reading about what was inside me and is still there. It was a catharsis for me. This child who was locked up in four walls had written a full report of everything I'd experienced and felt." These times were not all bad, and she was able to enjoy some of her childhood. Again drawing parallels to Anne Frank's life, Hepburn said "This spirit of survival is so strong in Anne Frank's words. One minute she says 'I'm so depressed'. The next she is longing to ride a bicycle. She is certainly a symbol of the child in very difficult circumstances, which is what I devote all my time to. She transcends her death."^{[citation needed}

One way in which Audrey Hepburn passed the time was by drawing. Some of her childhood artwork can be seen today.^[16] When the country was liberated, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration trucks followed.^[17] Hepburn said in an interview she ate an entire can of condensed milk and then got sick from one of her first relief meals because she put too much sugar in her oatmeal.^[18] This experience is what led her to become involved in UNICEF later in life.^[8][14]

Early career

In 1945, after the war, Hepburn left the Arnhem Conservatory and moved to Amsterdam, where she took ballet lessons with Sonia Gaskell^[19] and studied drama with English actor Felix Aylmer. In 1948, Hepburn went to London and took dancing lessons with the renownedMarie Rambert. To help pay expenses while training with Marie Rambert, Hepburn worked part-time as a model for fashion photographers.

Hepburn eventually asked Rambert about her future. Rambert assured her that she could continue to work there and have a great career, but the fact she was relatively tall (1.7 m, or 5' 7") coupled with her poor nutrition during the war would keep her from becoming a prima ballerina. Hepburn trusted Rambert's assessment and decided to pursue acting, a career in which she at least had a chance to excel.^[20]After Hepburn became a star, Rambert said in an interview, "she was a wonderful learner. If she had wanted to persevere, she might have become an outstanding ballerina."^[21]

Hepburn's mother was working menial jobs to support them and Hepburn needed to find a paying job. Since she trained to be a performer all her life, acting seemed a sensible career. She said "I needed the money; it paid ₤3 more than ballet jobs."^[22]

Her acting career started with the educational film Dutch in Seven Lessons (1948). She then played in musical theatre in productions such as High Button Shoes and Sauce Piquante. Part time modelling work was not always to be had and Miss Hepburn registered with the casting officers of Britain's film studios in the hope of getting work as an extra.

Hepburn's first role in a motion picture was in the British film One Wild Oat in which she played a hotel receptionist. She played several more minor roles in Young Wives' Tale, Laughter in Paradise, The Lavender Hill Mob, and Monte Carlo Baby.

During the filming of Monte Carlo Baby Hepburn was chosen to play the lead character in the Broadway play Gigi, that opened on 24 November, 1951, at the Fulton Theatre and ran for 219 performances

The writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, upon first seeing Hepburn, reportedly said 'voilà! There's our Gigi!'^[23] She won a Theatre World Award for her debut performance and it had a successful six month run.

Her first significant film performance was in the Thorold Dickinson film Secret People (1952), in which she played a prodigious ballerina. Naturally, Hepburn did all of her own dancing scenes

Hepburn's first starring role and first American film was opposite Gregory Peck in the Hollywood motion picture Roman Holiday. Producers initially wanted Elizabeth Taylor for the role, but director William Wyler was so impressed by Hepburn's screen test (the camera was left on and candid footage of Hepburn relaxing and answering questions, unaware that she was still being filmed, displayed her talents), that he cast her in the lead.

Wyler said, "She had everything I was looking for: charm, innocence and talent. She also was very funny. She was absolutely enchanting, and we said, 'That's the girl!'"^[24]

The movie was to have had Gregory Peck's name above the title in large font with "introducing Audrey Hepburn" beneath. After filming had been completed, Peck called his agent and, predicting correctly that Hepburn would win the Academy Award for Best Actress, had the billing changed so that her name also appeared before the title in type as large as his.

Hepburn and Peck bonded during filming, and there were rumours that they were romantically involved; both denied it. Hepburn, however, added, "actually, you have to be a little bit in love with your leading man and vice versa. If you're going to portray love, you have to feel it. You can't do it any other way. But you don't carry it beyond the set."^[25]

Because of the instant celebrity that came with Roman Holiday, Hepburn's illustration was placed on the 7 September, 1953, cover of TIME.

Hepburn's performance received much critical praise. A.H. Weiler noted in The New York Times, "Although she is not precisely a newcomer to films, Audrey Hepburn, the British actress who is being starred for the first time as Princess Ann, is a slender, elfin, and wistful beauty, alternately regal and childlike in her profound appreciation of newly-found, simple pleasures and love. Although she bravely smiles her acknowledgment of the end of that affair, she remains a pitifully lonely figure facing a stuffy future."^[26] Hepburn would later call Roman Holiday her dearest movie, because it was the one that made her a star.

After filming Roman Holiday for four months, Hepburn returned to New York and performed in Gigi for eight months. The play was performed in Los Angeles and San Francisco in its last month

She was signed to a seven-picture contract with Paramount with twelve months in between films to allow her time for stage work.^[27].