ACTOR
Audrey Hepburn
- Known for
- Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Wait Until Dark (1967), Always (1989), Funny Face (1957)
93 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
Audrey Hepburn is an actor best known for Breakfast at Tiffany's, Wait Until Dark and Always.
- #001
During the Battle of Arnhem, 16-year-old Audrey volunteered as a nurse at a Dutch hospital that received large numbers of wounded Allied soldiers; one of the men young Audrey helped back to health was a young British paratrooper (and future director), Terence Young. More than 20 years later, Young directed Hepburn in Wait Until Dark (1967).
- #002
She never named a favorite among her own films, but in interviews she spoke fondly of Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Roman Holiday (1953), Funny Face (1957), The Nun's Story (1959) and Charade (1963). She reportedly disliked working on The Unforgiven (1960) because of injuries she sustained during filming, and on Wait Until Dark (1967) because of the stress of her failing marriage. She was also said to have been disappointed with how Paris When It Sizzles (1964) and Bloodline (1979) turned out. Even so, she was widely renowned for her professionalism and almost always got along well with her co-stars and directors.
- #003
- #004
She turned down the lead in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) because she was too old for the role. Years later, in 1990, during her humanitarian career, she joined composer Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony Orchestra to narrate passages from Frank's diary for his symphonic work "From the Diary of Anne Frank," which she performed on a short tour of the United States and London. All proceeds from the concerts were donated to UNICEF.
- #005
- #006
She won the 1953 Best Actress Oscar for Roman Holiday (1953). On March 25, 1954, she received the award from the Academy's highly respected president, Jean Hersholt. After accepting the prize, Audrey excitedly kissed him on the mouth rather than the cheek. Minutes after accepting her 1953 Oscar, Audrey realized she had lost it. She hurried back around the stairs of the Center Theatre in New York to the ladies' room, retrieved the award and was ready to pose for photographs.
- #007
- #008
- #009
- #010
- #011
- #012
- #013
- #014
- #015
In addition to her first son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, Hepburn became pregnant four more times by her husband Mel Ferrer (in 1954, 1958, 1965 and 1967). She miscarried in all of those cases. She became pregnant twice by Dr. Andrea Dotti; in 1970 she gave birth to her second son, Luca, but in 1974 she suffered a miscarriage.
- #016
- #017
She was the fifth person, the third woman and the first person to receive an EGOT posthumously. The other 18 recipients (in chronological order) are Richard Rodgers, Helen Hayes, Rita Moreno, John Gielgud, Audrey Hepburn, Marvin Hamlisch, Jonathan Tunick, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Whoopi Goldberg, Scott Rudin, Robert Lopez, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice, John Legend, Alan Menken, Jennifer Hudson, Viola Davis and Elton John.
- #018
She is one of the 17 actresses who have won the Triple Crown of Acting (an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony); the others, in chronological order, are Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, Shirley Booth, Liza Minnelli, Rita Moreno, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Anne Bancroft, Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith, Ellen Burstyn, Helen Mirren, Frances McDormand, Jessica Lange, Viola Davis and Glenda Jackson.
- #019
- #020
- #021
- #022
Hepburn was offered the role of a Japanese bride alongside Marlon Brando in Sayonara (1957) but turned it down. She later explained that she "could not play an Oriental": "No one would believe me; they would laugh. But it is a very nice script, I know what I can and cannot do. And if you persuaded me you would regret it, because I would be terrible."
- #023
- #024
- #025
- #026
She suffered from hydrophobia, a condition that seriously hampered some of her scenes in Two for the Road (1967). When a take called for her co-star Albert Finney to throw Hepburn into a swimming pool, divers were kept waiting off camera to calm the actress, who was known to have a morbid fear of water.
- #027
Baroness Ella Van Heemstra, the mother of Kathleen Ruston, who was simply christened Audrey, temporarily changed her daughter's name from "Audrey" to "Edda" during the war, thinking "Audrey" would too strongly reveal her English origins. Being English in occupied Holland during the war was no advantage; it could draw the attention of the occupying German forces and lead to imprisonment or even deportation. After the war, her father Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston found documents about his ancestry, some of which carried the name "Hepburn". When he added it to his own name, his daughter had to add Hepburn to her legal name as well: Audrey Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston.
- #028
- #029
Hepburn was diagnosed with appendix cancer on 1 November 1992 (not colon cancer, as it is often mistakenly called). The cancer had spread to the lining of her small intestine. She had a foot of her intestine removed during surgery and underwent chemotherapy, and during a second operation it was decided that the cancer had spread too far and was untreatable. Her son Sean Hepburn Ferrer believes the condition had probably been developing over the previous five years.
- #030
- #031
- #032
- #033
- #034
- #035
- #036
While working on the small film We Go to Monte Carlo (1953) in Monaco in 1951, Hepburn was spotted by novelist Colette, who saw her as the ideal choice to play the lead in a future Broadway version of her play "Gigi." Although she lacked experience and self-confidence, she ultimately won the role.
- #037
- #038
- #039
- #040
- #041
According to director William Friedkin, Audrey was Warner Bros.' first choice for the role of Chris MacNeil in The Exorcist (1973), a studio whose productions The Nun's Story (1959), My Fair Lady (1964) and Wait Until Dark (1967) had been box-office successes. She would only agree to take the lead if the film were shot in Rome, so that she could stay at home and raise her sons. Both Friedkin and writer William Peter Blatty turned down the offer, and Ellen Burstyn was eventually cast.
- #042
- #043
- #044
- #045
- #046
- #047
- #048
Stanley Kubrick wanted Audrey Hepburn to play Joséphine de Beauharnais in his unrealized film about the life of Napoléon Bonaparte. Hepburn wrote Kubrick a letter praising the offer of the role but politely said she was not interested in working on a film at that time. Indeed, she would not work on a film until Robin and Marian (1976).
- #049
Like Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn appeared in five films on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Passions list of America's greatest love stories (2002). These are Roman Holiday (1953) at No. 4, Sabrina (1954) at No. 54, My Fair Lady (1964), in which Bogart shared the lead, at No. 12, Two for the Road (1967) at No. 57, and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) at No. 61.
- #050
- #051
- #052
After Wait Until Dark (1967), Audrey Hepburn was offered leading roles in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), 40 Carats (1973), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), The Exorcist (1973), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977) and The Turning Point (1977), after which she decided to remain in retirement except for Robin and Marian (1976) and to raise her sons.
- #053
- #054
- #055
Audrey Hepburn turned down the lead in Gigi (1958) to make Funny Face (1957). Ironically, her agent initially rejected the film, but Hepburn overruled the decision after reading the script. Her mother, Baroness Ella Van Heemstra, makes a small appearance as the patron of a sidewalk café, and the Yorkshire terrier "Mr. Famous" appears as the dog in the basket during the "Anna Karenina" train shoot. Hepburn did not want to be apart from her husband Mel Ferrer, so the Paris scenes were scheduled to coincide with the filming of Ferrer's Elena and Her Men (1956). Notably, in the scene of the photo shoot with the balloons, Paris's wetter-than-usual weather had to be written into the script. During filming of the Paris scenes, most of the crew and cast were tense because of the riots and political violence that had gripped the city. The wet weather hampered the filming of the wedding-dress dance scene. Both Fred Astaire and Hepburn kept slipping on the muddy and slick grass. In Funny Face she was fortunate enough to sing several songs. Her next full musical, My Fair Lady (1964), was dubbed with Marni Nixon's singing voice, to Hepburn's disappointment. The face portrait that appears in the darkroom scene was photographed by Richard Avedon. The film was shot back-to-back with Love in the Afternoon (1957).
- #056
- #057
- #058
In 1993, Audrey Hepburn became the thirteenth actor to win the Triple Crown of Acting: the Best Actress Oscar for Roman Holiday (1953), the Tony for Best Actress in a Play for "Ondine" (1954), and the Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Informational Programming for Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn (1993).
- #059
- #060
Audrey Hepburn has been consistently named as one of the most inspiring idols of Angelina Jolie, Victoria Beckham, Mary-Kate Olsen & Ashley Olsen, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Olivia Wilde, Freida Pinto, Taylor Swift, Mila Kunis and countless other celebrities in their careers, fashion and humanitarian work.
- #061
- #062
- #063
- #064
- #065
- #066
- #067
- #068
- #069
- #070
- #071
Audrey Hepburn was the daughter of Baroness van Heemstra and Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston. Her father was born in Úzice in Bohemia, Czechia, to an English-born father and a Slovak-born mother; he also had Austrian and, through his maternal grandfather, Czech Jewish ancestry. Audrey's mother was Dutch and had distant French and English roots. Some reports incorrectly stated that Audrey was of Irish descent on her father's side (she herself believed this), but her father's only connection to Ireland was that he had resided there in the second half of his life.
- #072
- #073
- #074
- #075
- #076
- #077
- #078
- #079
- #080
- #081
- #082
- #083
- #084
- #085
- #086
- #087
- #088
- #089
- #090
- #091
- #092
- #093
