Audrey Hepburn (May 4, 1929 - January 20, 1993) was a
Belgian-born American actress and humanitarian.
Born Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston in Brussels, Belgium, daughter of a well-to-do British
banker and a Dutch baroness mother. Ms. Hepburn attended private schools in England and the
Netherlands, but after the divorce of her parents she was living with her mother in the
Netherlands when the German invasion and occupation of World War II occurred.
After the landing of the Allied Forces on D-Day, things grew worse under the German occupiers.
Over the winter of 1944, brutality increased and the Nazis confiscated the Dutch people's
limited supply of food and fuel for themselves. Without heat in their homes, or food to eat,
people in the Netherlands starved and froze to death in the streets, their dead bodies stacked
one on top of another. Suffering from starvation, Ms. Hepburn developed numerous health
problems associated with malnutrition and the impact of those times would shape her life and
values.
After the war, she and her mother moved to London, England where she studied ballet, worked as
a model, and, in 1951 began acting in films. After being chosen to play the lead character in
the Broadway play, Gigi, and after a successful run in New York, Ms. Hepburn was offered a
starring role in the Hollywood motion picture, Roman Holiday. For her performance, she won
the Academy Award for Best Actress and over her illustrious career she would be nominated best
actress four more times.
One of Hollywood’s most popular box-office attractions, Audrey Hepburn co-starred with major
actors such as Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Rex Harrison,
Peter O'Toole, Gregory Peck, and Sean Connery.
After fifteen highly successful years in film, after 1967 Ms. Hepburn only acted occasionally,
her last role filmed in 1988 just before she was appointed as a special ambassador to the
United Nations Children's Fund . Grateful for her own good fortune after being a victim of
Nazi atrocities as a child, for the remainder of her life, Audrey Hepburn dedicated herself
to helping impoverished children in the world’s poorest nations.
In 1992, President George Bush Sr. presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in
recognition of her work with UNICEF. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
posthumously awarded her The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her contribution to humanity.
Audrey Hepburn has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1652 Vine Street.
Audrey Hepburn died of colon cancer on January 20, 1993, in Tolchenaz, Vaud, Switzerland and
was interred there.
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