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Actress,
humanitarian. Born Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston in Brussels,
Belgium, on May 4, 1929. Her father, Joseph Anthony Hepburn-Ruston,
was an English banker, and her mother, Ella Hepburn-Ruston,
was a Dutch baroness. Hepburn grew up in England, but moved
to the Netherlands after her parents separated. In 1948,
she appeared in her first film, Nederland in Lessen (Dutch
at the Double), billed as Edda Hepburn. Following the Nazi
invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn was consequently
unable to leave the country until 1948, when she returned
to London to study ballet on a scholarship at Arnhem Conservatory,
at which time she began using the professional name of Audrey
Hepburn.
In
1949, she made her London stage debut in the chorus of High
Button Shoes. With her gamine-like features and graceful
beauty, she was hand-picked by Colette herself to star in
the 1951 Broadway production of Gigi, which garnered enormous
critical acclaim. From 1951-52, she made a string of unremarkable
films, while slowly gaining recognition with her solid character
portrayals despite such a seemingly delicate demeanor.
In
1953, she was cast as a runaway princess wooed by an international
news journalist, played by Gregory Peck, in the romantic
comedy Roman Holiday. Her beguiling performance landed her
a Best Actress Oscar; from then on, Hepburn became an international
star and the very definition of elegant chic.
Hepburn
earned another Academy Award nomination for Best Actress
for her performance in Billy Wilder’s romantic comedy
Sabrina (1954), costarring Humphrey Bogart and William Holden.
That year she returned to New York where she starred in
Broadway’s Ondine and received a Tony Award for Best
Actress in a Drama. In 1957, she appeared in the musical
Funny Face (1957) with Fred Astaire, and in Wilder's romantic
comedy Love in the Afternoon with Gary Cooper. In 1959,
she received an Oscar nomination, the New York Film Critics
Circle Award, and the British Film Academy Award for Best
Actress for her leading role in the critically acclaimed
drama The Nun’s Story.
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