Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Kathleen Hepburn, born Audrey Kathleen Ruston on 4 May 1929 in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium, was a British actress whose stage and screen career placed her among the most celebrated performers of the twentieth century. She died on 20 January 1993 in Tolochenaz, Switzerland, of appendix cancer. The American Film Institute ranked her the third-greatest female screen legend of Classical Hollywood cinema, and she remains one of a small number of entertainers to have won competitive Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.

Hepburn was born into an aristocratic family. Her mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra, was a Dutch noblewoman whose father had served as mayor of Arnhem and as governor of Dutch Guiana. Her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, was a British subject born in Auschitz, in what was then Austria-Hungary, who later changed his surname to the double-barrelled Hepburn-Ruston. The family moved frequently between Brussels, Arnhem, The Hague, and London before settling in the Brussels suburb of Linkebeek in 1932. Joseph left the family abruptly in 1935, an event Hepburn later described as the most traumatic of her life. In 1937, she was sent to Kent, where she attended a small private school in Elham. Her parents officially divorced the following year.

When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Hepburn's mother relocated her to Arnhem, hoping the Netherlands would remain neutral. Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945, studying ballet under Winja Marova, who regarded her as a star pupil. During the German occupation, she adopted the name Edda van Heemstra because an English-sounding name was considered dangerous. By 1944, she was performing ballet to raise money in support of the resistance. After the war, she studied with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam from 1945 to 1948, then continued her training with Marie Rambert in London.

Hepburn began her performing career as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions before making minor appearances in film. Her Broadway career ran from 1951 to 1954, during which she appeared in two productions: Gigi and Ondine. Her work in that period earned her a Theatre World Award in 1952. In 1954, she received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in Ondine.

That same year, 1953, Hepburn achieved international film stardom with the romantic comedy Roman Holiday, in which she starred alongside Gregory Peck. The role made her the first actress to win an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Award for a single performance. She subsequently appeared in a succession of prominent films, including Sabrina (1954) with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, the musical Funny Face (1957) 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, she starred in the thriller Wait Until Dark, earning Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA nominations. She appeared occasionally in film thereafter, including Robin and Marian (1976) with Sean Connery. Her final recorded screen performances were in Steven Spielberg's 1989 romantic fantasy film Always and the 1990 documentary television series Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, the latter earning her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Informational Programming.

Over the course of her career, Hepburn received three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role, BAFTA's Lifetime Achievement Award, two Golden Globe Awards, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and a Special Tony Award. In 1994, a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children was awarded for her contributions to the spoken-word recording Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales. She was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame.

In the later years of her life, Hepburn directed considerable energy toward humanitarian work. She contributed to UNICEF from 1954 onward, and between 1988 and 1992 she worked in impoverished communities across Africa, South America, and Asia in her capacity as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. In December 1992, she received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of that work.