56 Fun Facts About Audrey Hepburn

In which city was Audrey Hepburn born?

Brussels. Though born in Belgium she was a British citizen through her father, and she spent part of her childhood at school in England.

What was Hepburn's surname at birth?

Ruston. Her father later added 'Hepburn' to it, believing he was descended from the 16th-century Earl of Bothwell, and she dropped the Ruston when she began performing in London.

Why did Hepburn's mother move her from England to the Netherlands in 1939?

She thought it would stay neutral, as it had in the First World War. Germany invaded eight months later, and Hepburn spent the next five years under occupation.

What first name did Hepburn go by during the German occupation of the Netherlands?

Edda. Her mother made the change because 'Audrey' sounded dangerously English under German rule, and she went back to her own name once the war was over.

During the 1944-45 Dutch famine, Hepburn's family made flour from what?

Tulip bulbs, ground to bake cakes and biscuits. The Germans had cut off food shipments to punish a Dutch railway strike, and by the end of that winter city soup kitchens were boiling bulbs as well.

Which dance company's scholarship brought Hepburn to London after the war?

Ballet Rambert. Marie Rambert rated her a fine pupil but is said to have told her she was too tall for a prima ballerina, so Hepburn took modelling and chorus-line jobs and drifted into acting.

Which French novelist spotted Hepburn in Monte Carlo and cast her in Gigi on Broadway?

Colette. Hepburn had spoken only a few lines in her whole acting career when the author picked her, yet she opened to rave reviews and won a Theatre World Award.

In which Ealing comedy about a gold-bullion robbery does a young Hepburn briefly appear as Chiquita?

The Lavender Hill Mob. She has a few words with Alec Guinness, whose mild bank clerk smuggles the stolen gold abroad melted down into Eiffel Tower souvenirs.

Which character did Hepburn play in Roman Holiday (1953)?

Princess Ann. Hepburn won the part with a screen test that William Wyler ordered kept running after the scene was over, so he could see how she came across once she stopped acting.

Which co-star insisted that Hepburn share top billing with him on Roman Holiday?

Gregory Peck. The credits were to carry his name alone, with 'Introducing Audrey Hepburn' below, but once filming began he was sure she would be a big star and had her moved up above the title.

In Roman Holiday, the American who shows Hepburn's character around Rome is secretly what?

A reporter. He is after an exclusive on her day of freedom, with a friend snapping her on a camera hidden in a cigarette lighter, but he falls for her and never files the story.

Hepburn's performance in Roman Holiday won her which three awards?

Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA. All three came for her first starring role, and the cropped haircut and simple clothes she wore in it started a fashion among young women.

For which Broadway fantasy play did Hepburn win a Tony Award in 1954?

Ondine. She played a water nymph who falls for a mortal, collected the Tony three days after her Oscar, and then never acted on Broadway again.

Which two actors played the wealthy brothers competing for Hepburn in Sabrina (1954)?

Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. The chauffeur's daughter comes home from Paris set on Holden's playboy, only to end up with Bogart's all-business older brother.

Which French designer, first hired for Sabrina, became Hepburn's lifelong collaborator and friend?

Hubert de Givenchy. Told that 'Miss Hepburn' wanted to see him, the young couturier expected Katharine Hepburn, and found instead a newcomer whose first big film had not yet opened.

Which heroine did Hepburn play opposite Henry Fonda in the 1956 film of War and Peace?

Natasha Rostova. Showman Mike Todd had wanted her for his own version of the novel, but she signed with a pair of Italian producers instead and Todd's film was never made.

In Funny Face (1957), who plays the photographer who discovers Hepburn's bookshop clerk?

Fred Astaire. His character was modelled on Richard Avedon, who shot the fashion stills used in the film, and Hepburn did her own singing opposite Astaire.

Which role did Variety call Hepburn's most demanding, and her finest performance?

Sister Luke in The Nun's Story. She plays a nursing nun sent to the Congo who ends by walking away from her vows, and the part brought Hepburn her third Oscar nomination.

What was Hepburn's only western?

The Unforgiven. A horse threw her during the shoot in Durango, Mexico, and John Huston's production had to shut down while she recovered.

Truman Capote wanted which star, rather than Hepburn, to play Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's?

Marilyn Monroe. Capote thought Hepburn miscast as Holly and disliked how the film softened his story, yet the part became one of the best remembered of her career.

Who played Professor Henry Higgins opposite Hepburn in the film of My Fair Lady?

Rex Harrison. He had created Higgins on Broadway and won the Best Actor Oscar for the film, on a night when Hepburn herself was not even nominated.

Who played Hepburn's husband in Two for the Road, the story of a marriage told through its road trips?

Albert Finney. They played a couple whose marriage is coming apart on the roads of France, just as Hepburn's own first marriage was heading for divorce.

In The Children's Hour (1961), Hepburn and which actress play teachers accused of being lesbians?

Shirley MacLaine. William Wyler had filmed the same play once before, as These Three, when the censors made him turn its lesbian rumour into a love triangle; this time he could keep it.

Which Charade (1963) co-star had the script changed so that Hepburn's character pursued him?

Cary Grant. A quarter of a century older than Hepburn, he was uneasy about romancing her on screen, so the writers had her do the chasing and gave him lines joking about his age.

In her first screen role, in 1948, Hepburn played a flight attendant for which airline?

KLM. She was a ballet student in Amsterdam when she took the bit part in a short travelogue about the Netherlands, and six years later she was collecting an Oscar.

Who originated Eliza Doolittle on stage but lost the My Fair Lady film role to Hepburn?

Julie Andrews. Jack Warner passed her over as not bankable enough for the film, so she made her screen debut in Mary Poppins that year instead and won the Best Actress Oscar for it.

Which ghost singer dubbed Hepburn's songs in My Fair Lady?

Marni Nixon. Hepburn trained with a coach and expected to sing the part herself before the studio ruled her voice unsuitable; Nixon had already sung unseen for Deborah Kerr in The King and I.

In How to Steal a Million, the art collection owned by the father of Hepburn's character is made up of what?

Forgeries. When her father lends a fake Cellini statue to a Paris museum, she has to steal it back before the experts can examine it and expose the whole collection.

In Wait Until Dark (1967), Hepburn earned her fifth Oscar nomination playing a woman who is what?

Blind. In the climax her character smashes every light in the flat, so the killer hunting her has to fight in a darkness that she already knows how to live in.

Which director made Funny Face, Charade and Two for the Road with Hepburn?

Stanley Donen. On the last of the three he kept her out of her usual couturier's clothes, wanting a less chic, more everyday look for her character.

Hepburn attempted a comeback in 1976 as Maid Marian opposite which Robin Hood?

Sean Connery. It was her first film in nine years, and where many of her early leading men had been decades older, this time her co-star was her own age.

Hepburn's last starring film role, in They All Laughed (1981), was directed by whom?

Peter Bogdanovich. His co-star Dorothy Stratten was murdered soon after shooting ended, and the film sat on a studio shelf for more than a year before a brief release.

Hepburn's final film appearance was a cameo as an angel in which Steven Spielberg film?

Always. As Hap she meets Richard Dreyfuss's firefighting pilot after his fatal crash, and sends him back unseen to guide a younger flyer and to let the woman he loved move on.

Hepburn's posthumous Emmy came for a PBS documentary series about what?

Gardens of the world. She did not live to see the series air on PBS: its national run began on the day of her funeral, and the Emmy followed that autumn.

Hepburn's posthumous Grammy was for a spoken-word album of what?

Children's stories. Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales, recorded in the last year of her life, won in 1994 and made her one of the few performers to hold an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony.

Hepburn's first UNICEF field mission in 1988 was to which country?

Ethiopia. Years of drought and civil strife had brought famine, and she went to turn the world's attention to its starving children.

Which famine-stricken country did Hepburn visit for UNICEF in September 1992, four months before her death?

Somalia. She came home with the pains that proved to be cancer, yet her account of the famine helped to stir the world's response to it.

Which US president awarded Hepburn the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work with UNICEF?

George H. W. Bush. She had kept travelling for UNICEF in 1992 even while ill with cancer, and she died a month after the medal was awarded.

In which country was La Paisible, the farmhouse Hepburn called home from the 1960s until her death?

Switzerland. She settled in the village of Tolochenaz, above Lake Geneva, to bring up her sons far from Hollywood, and she is buried in its cemetery.

What was the profession of Hepburn's second husband, Andrea Dotti?

Psychiatrist. She married the Italian doctor only weeks after her first divorce came through, and stayed off the screen until 1976 to put her family first.

Robert Wolders, Hepburn's partner in her last years, was the widower of which star of 1930s films?

Merle Oberon. The Wuthering Heights star was married to Wolders for her last four years; he then spent twelve at Hepburn's side and often travelled with her for UNICEF.

Who played the suave burglar Hepburn recruits to rob a Paris museum in How to Steal a Million?

Peter O'Toole. She catches his intruder red-handed in her father's house and, instead of calling the police, talks him into helping her steal a statue from a museum.

Who played Hepburn in the 2000 television film The Audrey Hepburn Story?

Jennifer Love Hewitt. The film was her own pet project, which she also produced, and a young Emmy Rossum played Hepburn as a girl.

Which actress joins Katharine Hepburn above Audrey on AFI's 1999 screen-legends list?

Bette Davis. Audrey came third, ahead of Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo, though she made fewer than thirty films and had all but retired from the screen by the age of 38.

Which English photographer wrote of Hepburn that 'nobody ever looked like her' before the war?

Cecil Beaton. He added that thousands of imitations had since appeared, and he later dressed her for My Fair Lady, winning Oscars for its costumes and sets.

Which British actress caused a stir in 2010 by saying Hepburn 'can't sing and she can't really act'?

Emma Thompson. The remark brought her some stick, though not everyone disagreed: one leading film critic wrote that she had a very real point.

Which chocolate bar used a computer-manipulated Hepburn in a 2013 British TV advert?

Galaxy. A London effects house rebuilt her face entirely by computer for the minute-long spot, which put her back on screen twenty years after her death.

Who played the struggling writer who falls for Hepburn's Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's?

George Peppard. Steve McQueen was in the running for the part before Peppard won it, and a generation later Peppard led television's A-Team.

Which Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer song did Hepburn sing herself in Breakfast at Tiffany's?

Moon River. When a studio executive wanted the song cut after a preview, Hepburn is said to have answered 'Over my dead body'; it stayed in and won the Oscar for Best Song.

Who directed Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)?

Blake Edwards. He was not the first choice: John Frankenheimer was announced as director, but he was gone before filming began and Edwards took over.

Which actor played Roat, the killer who terrorises Hepburn's character in Wait Until Dark?

Alan Arkin. Roat murders both of his partners in crime before he comes after her himself with a knife, in a final scene played almost entirely in the dark.

In Green Mansions (1959), Hepburn's jungle girl Rima falls for a traveller played by which actor?

Anthony Perkins. To make the forest scenes work, Hepburn raised a fawn at home for months beforehand so that the animal would stay close to her on camera.

Which costume designer won Oscars for Hepburn's first two Hollywood films, Roman Holiday and Sabrina?

Edith Head. On Sabrina the costume credit was hers alone and so was the Oscar, though the Paris gowns are widely credited to a young French couturier.

In Love in the Afternoon (1957), Hepburn starred alongside Maurice Chevalier and which leading man?

Gary Cooper. He plays a middle-aged playboy almost thirty years her senior, and her character, a private detective's daughter, falls for the very man her father has been hired to watch.

Which Allied airborne operation was fought around the teenage Hepburn's wartime home in 1944?

Operation Market Garden. The failed Allied drive on Arnhem, later filmed as A Bridge Too Far, was beaten back on her doorstep, and the hunger winter that followed left her gravely ill.

The outfit Hepburn wears as Breakfast at Tiffany's opens is a famous example of which fashion staple?

The little black dress. One of the versions made for the film sold at Christie's in 2006 for 467,200 pounds, several times its estimate, and the money went to build schools for destitute children.