Audrey Hepburn (1929–93,) born Audrey Kathleen Ruston, baptized Edda Van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston, was an award-winning British screen- and stage-superstar. After pursuing a career as an actress in England, she moved to Hollywood.
Born in Brussels, Hepburn spent World War II in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. She later trained in ballet in Amsterdam and London, making her film début in Nederlands in zeven lessen (1948) and her London stage début in the chorus of High Button Shoes (1948.) She first appeared on Broadway in Gigi (1951) and won a Best Actress Academy Award for Roman Holiday (1953.) An enchanting, pencil-slim actress of coltish grace, she had many film successes, including Funny Face (1957,) Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961,) My Fairlady (1964,) Two for the Road (1967,) and Wait Until Dark (1967.)
Hepburn’s beauty and Givenchy-inspired elegance created a distinctive 1960s style that made her one of the most admired and imitated women of her generation. She devoted herself to charity work in her later years and traveled extensively as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. She made her final appearance in Always (1989.)
Biographies include Jerry Vermilye’s The Complete Films of Audrey Hepburn (1995,) Alexander Walker’s Audrey: Her Real Story (1994,) and Barry Paris’s Audrey Hepburn (1996.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Audrey Hepburn
I’ve been lucky. Opportunities don’t often come along. So, when they do, you have to grab them.
—Audrey Hepburn
Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering — because you can’t take it in all at once.
—Audrey Hepburn
Topics: Thinking
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm … As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
—Audrey Hepburn
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.
—Audrey Hepburn
I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I’d invented it, because it is very true.
—Audrey Hepburn
I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience.
—Audrey Hepburn
Topics: Experience
I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.
—Audrey Hepburn
Topics: Affection
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Charlie Chaplin British Actor
Laurence Olivier English Actor, Producer,, Director
Ingrid Bergman Swedish Actor
Helen Hayes American Actor
Elizabeth Taylor American Actress
John Lennon British Singer
Meryl Streep American Actor
Shirley MacLaine American Actor
Richard Burton Welsh Actor
Fred Astaire American Dancer, Singer