As a little girl, I was enthralled with her beauty and so was my mom. In an effort to groom me to have better posture for my ballet classes, my mom used to make me walk around the room with a book on my head. This dreaded exercise was made bearable only because I used to imagine I was Audrey Hepburn walking around in a movie set :-).
To know more about her background, career and achievements, please click this link. I would greatly encourage you to read it to be inspired by this wonderful lady that none can ever hope to compare!!! For as long as I can remember, she has been and will always be my one and only idol!! I am glad that the last nine years of her life were spent with her true love, Robert Wolders, a Dutch actor who was the widower of film star Merle Oberon. In 1989, after nine years with him, she called them the happiest years of her life. "Took me long enough", she said in an interview with Barbara Walters.
Wikipedia has really an excellent record of her early life. An excerpt from here:
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...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, and oedema.[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."
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."
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.
Read more over here.
For decades, my all-time favorite movie is Breakfast at Tiffany's (won two Oscars) where she co-starred with George Peppard(Click here for a slide show from that movie) and my favorite song is Moon River written by HenryMancini(1961 Academy Award winner for Best Original Song). Incidentally, that song was sung at my 25th wedding anniversary dinner by an old varsity mate :-) and I have yet to upload that video clip.
She will always be remembered, not only for her beauty and acting skills, but also for her fantastic work as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, a role she had from 1954 till her death. Please read this Wikipedia link to know more about her amazing legacy which stemmed from a genuine heart filled with compassion and love for dying, helpless children.
The following set of slides called Time Tested Beauty Tips have always been falsely attributed to Audrey Hepburn (even in the slides sorry) but was actually written by Sam Levenson for his grandchild. Before you watch that set of slides, please start the Youtube video for Audrey Hepburn's version of Moon River. Relax, sit back, be lulled by her husky sexy voice and timeless beauty (and such a romantic clip too with the gorgeous George Peppard!!!!) as you get mesmerised by the wise words of Sam Levenson. Have a wonderful day dear reader!! God bless you and yours!
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