"I'm too thin. And my ears stick out and my teeth
are crooked and my neck's much too long."
Audrey to Gary Cooper
in "Love In the Afternoon"
In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably start this off by admitting that Audrey Hepburn was my first movie crush. Together with Jean Seberg in "The Mouse That Roared", it was Hepburn in "Funny Face" who made me aware that certain women on the screen were interesting in a way my young adolescent self hadn't previously considered. There would be others, of course, quite a few, actually, but Audrey Hepburn was the first.
She was born in Belgium in 1929, and spent the war years in Nazi-occupied Holland. She trained as a dancer and played small parts in British films in the early 1950s, before scoring a hit as "Gigi" on Broadway and winning an Oscar as the runaway princess in "Roman Holiday" in 1953. In the age of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren, Hepburn was the skinny, flat-chested exception to the voluptuous rule, refined and unerringly elegant and frequently cast opposite much older men.
She made almost all of her movies in the 15 years between 1953 and 1967. The list includes these:
"Laughter In Paradise" (1951/Mario Zampi)
Hepburn at 21 made a brief early impression with a walk-on role as a cigarette girl.
"Roman Holiday" (1953/William Wyler)
Audrey and Gregory Peck scoot around Rome in the movie that made her a star.
"Sabrina" (1954/Billy Wilder)
Audrey's a chauffeur's daughter torn between a straight-arrow played by Humphrey Bogart and his wayward brother played by William Holden.
"Funny Face" (1957/Stanley Donen)
Fred Astaire and Audrey cut the rug.
"Love In the Afternoon" (1957/Billy Wilder)
Audrey falls for an aging rake played by Gary Cooper.
"The Nun's Story" (1959/Fred Zinnemann)
Hepburn plays a novice nun working as a medical missionary in Africa and struggling with her vow of obedience.
"Breakfast At Tiffany's" (1961/Blake Edwards)
The cat, the cigarette holder and the little black dress. Hepburn's most iconic role.
"Charade" (1963/Stanley Donen)
Audrey and Cary Grant in Paris, with music by Henry Mancini.
"My Fair Lady" (1964/George Cukor)
Wouldn't it be loverly?
"Robin and Marian" (1976/Richard Lester)
Audrey and Sean Connery play the lovers of Sherwood Forest in middle age.
"Always" (1989/Steven Spielberg)
Hepburn plays an angel in Spielberg's remake of "A Guy Named Joe". Her last appearance on film.
From 1968 on, her film roles were infrequent, but by then her place in the culture as an icon of style and class was secure. In her later years, she spent more time working for UNICEF than she did in front of a movie camera, and her concern for the victims of famine was genuine. During the war and just after it, her family had come close to starvation. She died in 1993, and was awarded a posthumous Oscar that year for her humanitarian work.
"Everything about you is perfect."
Gary Cooper to Audrey
in "Love In the Afternoon"
