Audrey Hepburn: 30 years since the untimely death of the world-famous actress – Shared experiences with Anne Frank

The combination of refined beauty, girlish purity, with the lean bony body and adolescent lines, to which the ballet gave grace and a light bodice, made the Audrey Hepburn one of the stars, who will forever have her own chapter in cinema. However, it was her big sad eyes that inspired directors, landed her great roles, and she reciprocated with memorable performances.

Her sad look, however, was not a natural gift, but the product of a very difficult childhood, as Audrey Hepburn experienced firsthand what war, Nazi atrocities, but also loss, when her beloved father abandoned her, together with with her mother, at the age of six. A traumatic experience, as her father was not the role model she had in her childhood eyes, but a devoted Hitlerite.

Despite this, Audrey Hepburn, who completes 30 years since her untimely death (January 20, 1993), will find by toil and with great will, her way in acting, will reach the top of Hollywood, while for many years of her life she will devote herself to the children who were in need and will try to give them the love that she did not experience even though she was born into wealth.

From riches to traumatic loss

But let’s start from the beginning. Audrey Hepburn was born on May 4, 1929 in Brussels, the only daughter of Irish banker Joseph Victor Anthony Rushton and the former baroness, a Dutch aristocrat Ella van Heemstra, who had from her first marriage, with a Dutch nobleman, a descendant of King Edward III of England, two more half-brothers. Little Audrey took her first steps as a princess, going to the prestigious school in Kent, but before she could understand much, her father would abandon his family, as he and his wife were members of the British Union of Fascists. A traumatic experience for Audrey, as she admitted years later.

The German occupation and Anne Frank

But the worst was yet to come for Hepburn, with the outbreak of World War II. In 1939 her mother made the decision to move with her children to her grandfather’s house in Arnhem, Holland, as she believed the Netherlands was safe from a German invasion. There, Audrey will attend the Arnhem Conservatory, where she was introduced to ballet.

In 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands, forcing Hepburn to change her name to sound less English. The situation worsened continuously, while in the winter of 1944 famine would come, leaving the locals without heating and food. She herself, who saw people dying of frostbite or starvation in the streets, never lost her courage and as a ballerina, she danced to raise money to help the resistance. Suffering from severe anemia and breathing problems, now-teenage Audrey will see her cousin’s mother executed in front of her, while her half-brother, Ian, will spend time in a labor camp.

The images, of Jews on trains being transported to labor camps and the execution of resistance fighters, deeply hurt Hepburn, who had much in common with Anne Frank, whose book, immediately after the war, devastated her.

“I was exactly the same age as Anne Frank. We were both ten when the war broke out and fifteen when it ended. I was given the book in Dutch in 1946 by a friend – and it blew me away. It does to a lot of people when they read it for the first time but I didn’t read it as a book, but as printed pages. This was my life. I didn’t know what I was about to read. I was never the same again, it affected me very deeply,” Hepburn had said.

“We saw retaliation. We saw young men put themselves in front of a wall and get shot and they would block the road and then open it up and you could go through again. If you read the diary, I marked a part where it says “Five hostages executed today”. It was the day they executed my uncle. And in the words of this child I read what was inside me and is still there. It was a catharsis for me. This child, locked in four walls, wrote a complete description of what I experienced and felt. This spirit of survival is so strong in the words of Anne Frank. At one point he writes “I have fallen into great depression.” Next time he would like to ride a bike. It is definitely a symbol of the child in very difficult circumstances, which is what I spend all my time on. It transcends her death,” he added.

Ballet and acting

Immediately after the war, she moved to Amsterdam, to attend ballet lessons, then she will go to London to perfect herself by taking ballet lessons from the famous Marie Robert, but because of her height, 1.70 was then almost prohibitive, for a prima ballerina, as well as her ailing health, did not make it. So, listening to the advice of her teacher, she will turn to acting, from which she would secure even more money, as her mother worked as a maid, to support her family.

He started working in the theater, in musical performances and at the same time playing small roles in films. While filming Monte Carlo Baby, Hepburn was cast in the lead role in the Broadway play Gigi, which opened on November 24, 1951 at the Fulton Theatre.

Wyler, the Oscar and the acclaim

Her first leading role would come in 1953 in the American film “Rome Holiday”, alongside superstar Gregory Peck and directed by the great William Wyler, who had been impressed by her audition and therefore rejected the original Elizabeth Taylor’s selection. As Wyler had said of his choice “she had everything I was looking for: Charm, innocence and talent. She was also very funny. It was absolutely enchanting.” In a few words, Wyler will summarize the characteristics of the actress Audrey Hepburn.

Hepburn’s luck to fall on Wyler, will give her the Oscar A Female role and open an unrepeatable path to glory. He would win an Oscar, Tony, Emmy and Grammy, star in countless Broadway shows and win four theater awards. At the same time, for 20 years she will emerge as a symbol of fashion, an idol of elegance that perhaps has no equal, following the maxim she had set herself: “For beautiful eyes, see the good in others. For beautiful lips, speak kind words. And for the show: walk as if you are never alone.”

A triumphant march

The continuation for Hepburn will be triumphant, as great films, wonderful performances, universal acceptance will follow. Her chosen choices will give her the satisfaction of not having any failures in cinema. Among her best films are Fred Chineman’s wonderful drama “A Nun’s Story” (1959), Blake Edwards’ now legendary “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961), the classic comedy “My Sweet Sabrina” (1954) by Max Billie Wilder opposite Humphrey Bogard and William Holden, Stanley Donen’s romantic musical Smart Puss (1957), with Fred Astaire, George Cukor’s blockbuster My Fair Lady, with Rex Harrison, ” Wyler’s How to Steal $1,000,000 (1966) with Peter O’Toole, the romantic drama Two for the Road (1967) opposite Albert Finney and the beautiful western The Unforgiven (1960) John Huston, with Burt Lancaster by her side.

Forever sensitive woman

Of course, there is her latest appearance, after years of working with children in need, for peoples plagued by poverty and hunger, traveling to dangerous areas of Latin America, Africa and Asia, as her Goodwill Ambassador UNICEF. It was in 1989 in Spielberg’s romantic fantasy adventure Forever, in which her brief cameo was the film’s most poignant feature, as it became known that she was suffering from cancer. A battle that he will fight bravely, between painful operations and chemotherapy, but also constant trips, to be next to children and wintering peoples.

Audrey Hepburn, who was married twice – the first to the famous actor Mel Ferrer, the second to the Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti – had two children, had many romantic relationships with famous and non-famous men, as due to the psychological trauma of losing her father , she was always looking for male love. A wounded woman who knew how precious the pursuit of happiness is. Because she believed that “happy girls are the most beautiful”. Especially when their look has something melancholy, they have a great human story to tell…

RES-EMP

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