Audrey Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston (née Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Recognised as a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend from the Classical Hollywood cinema. She was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame and is one of only a few entertainers who have won competitive Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards.
Born into an aristocratic family in Ixelles, Brussels, Hepburn spent parts of her childhood in Belgium, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. She attended boarding school in Kent from 1936 to 1939. Hepburn returned to the Netherlands at the outbreak of the Second World War. She studied ballet at the Arnhem Conservatory during the war. By 1944, Hepburn was performing ballet to raise money to support the resistance. She studied with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam from 1945 to 1948 and then with Marie Rambert in London.
Hepburn began performing as a chorus girl in West End musicals and later made minor appearances in several films. She rose to stardom in the romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953) alongside Gregory Peck, for which she became the first actress to win an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for the same performance. The same year, Hepburn won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play for her performance in Ondine. She went on to star in a number of successful films, such as Sabrina (1954), with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden; Funny Face (1957), a musical with Fred Astaire in which she sang her own parts; the drama The Nun's Story (1959); the romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961); the thriller-romance Charade (1963), opposite Cary Grant; and the musical My Fair Lady (1964).
In 1967, Hepburn starred in the thriller Wait Until Dark, receiving Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA nominations. After that role, she only occasionally appeared in films, one being Robin and Marian (1976) with Sean Connery. Her last recorded performances were in Always (1989), an American romantic fantasy film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg, and the 1990 documentary television series Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming. Hepburn won three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role and BAFTA's Lifetime Achievement Award. She also won two Golden Globes and the Cecil B. DeMille Award. She was also the recipient of a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award and the Special Tony Award. In 1994, Hepburn's contributions to a spoken-word recording titled Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales earned her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.
Later in life, Hepburn devoted much of her time to charity. She contributed to UNICEF from 1954 onwards. Between 1988 and 1992, she worked in some of the poorest communities of Africa, South America, and Asia. In December 1992, Hepburn received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. One month later, Hepburn died of appendix cancer at her home in Tolochenaz, Switzerland.
1929–1938: Family and early childhood
Audrey Kathleen Ruston (later, Hepburn-Ruston) was born at number 48 Rue Keyenveld in Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels, Belgium. She was known to her family as Adriaantje. She was raised Protestant and remained one throughout her life.
Hepburn's mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra (1900–1984), was a Dutch noblewoman. She was the daughter of Baron Aarnoud van Heemstra (1871–1957), who had served as the mayor of Arnhem from 1910 to 1920, and as the governor of Dutch Guiana from 1921 to 1928, and Baroness Elbrig Willemine Henriette van Asbeck (1873–1939), a granddaughter of Count Dirk van Hogendorp (1797–1845). At the age of 19, she married Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford, an oil executive based in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, where the couple subsequently lived. Before divorcing in 1925, they had two sons, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford (1920–1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (1924–2010).
Hepburn's father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889–1980), was a British subject born in Auschitz, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the son of Victor John George Ruston, who was of British and German-Austrian background, and Anna Juliana Franziska Karolina Wels, who was of German-Austrian origin and was born in Kovarce, Kingdom of Hungary. He was an Honorary British Consul in Semarang, Dutch East Indies, from 1923 to 1924. Joseph was married to Cornelia Bisschop, a Dutch heiress, prior to his marriage to Ella. He later changed his surname to the more "aristocratic" double-barrelled Hepburn-Ruston, perhaps at Ella's insistence, due to mistakenly believing himself descended from James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.
Ella and Joseph married in Batavia in 1926. Joseph was working for a trading company at the time. Soon after the marriage, the couple moved to Europe, where he began working for a loan company; reportedly, tin merchants MacLaine, Watson, and Company in London. After a year in London, they moved to Brussels, where he had been assigned to open a branch office. After three years spent travelling between Brussels, Arnhem, The Hague and London, the family settled in the suburban Brussels municipality of Linkebeek in 1932. Hepburn's early childhood was sheltered and privileged. Due to Joseph's job, the family travelled back and forth among three countries, enhancing her multinational background.
In the mid-1930s, Ella and Joseph recruited and collected donations for the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Ella met Adolf Hitler and wrote favourable articles about him for the BUF. Joseph left the family abruptly in 1935 after a "scene" in Brussels. He subsequently moved to London, where he became more deeply involved in Fascist activity and never visited Hepburn abroad. The same year, Ella moved to her family's estate in Arnhem with Hepburn and sent Alex and Ian to The Hague to live with relatives. Joseph wanted Hepburn to be educated in the United Kingdom, so in 1937, she was sent to live in Kent, where she, known as Audrey Ruston or "Little Audrey", was educated at a small private school in the village of Elham. Ella and Joseph officially divorced the next year. Later in her life, Hepburn often spoke of the effect on a child of being "dumped" as "children need two parents"; she stated that Joseph's departure was "the most traumatic event of my life". In the 1960s, Hepburn renewed contact with Joseph after locating him in Dublin, Ireland, through the Red Cross; although he remained emotionally detached, she supported him financially until his death.
1939–1945: Experiences during World War II
After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Hepburn's mother moved her daughter back to Arnhem in the hope that, as during the First World War, the Netherlands would remain neutral and be spared a German attack. While there, Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945. She had begun taking ballet lessons during her last years at boarding school, and continued training in Arnhem under the tutelage of Winja Marova, becoming her "star pupil". After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn used the name Edda van Heemstra, because an "English-sounding" name was considered dangerous during the German occupation. Her family was profoundly affected by the occupation, with Hepburn later stating that "had we known that we were going to be occupied for five years, we might have all shot ourselves. We thought it might be over next week… six months… next year… that's how we got through".
In 1942, her uncle, Otto van Limburg Stirum (husband of her mother's older sister, Miesje), was executed in retaliation for an act of sabotage by the resistance movement; while he had not been involved in the act, he was targeted due to his family's prominence in Dutch society. These family events were the turning point in the attitude of Hepburn's mother, who had flirted with Nazism up to this point. Hepburn's half-brother Ian was deported to Berlin to work in a German labour camp, and her other half-brother Alex went into hiding to avoid the same fate.