THE REAL AUDREY HEPBURN Twenty five years after the iconic actress’s death, her family share their stories.
She was one of the most stylish women of all time, but Audrey Hepburn wasn’t much of a shopper. She favoured flats over heels and didn’t pluck her eyebrows. As for plastic surgery, “she never considered it,” says her son Sean Ferrer, 57. She smoked too much, enjoyed Scotch and snacked on one piece (or more) of dark chocolate after dinner. “She did not live life as an icon,” says her other son, Luca Dotti, 47. “She was always herself.”
While her doe-eyed beauty and gamine glamour (at 1.7m she weighed a consistent 49.9kg as an adult) beguiled the world, privately the star of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sabrina led a complicated, often difficult life. She was insecure about her looks as a girl in Holland and never forgot the trauma of World War II, during which she nearly died of starvation. She struggled in her two marriages but was a doting mother who found joy helping the world’s children with UNICEF. “She was never someone who wanted more, more, more,” says Dotti. “She was not a collector. She cared more about living beings.”
Nearly 25 years after her death (from cancer of the appendix at age 63 on Jan. 20, 1993), her sons sold some of her most personal belongings in a Christie’s auction in September. Here, they and other loved ones share their memories of the private Hepburn. “She was not part of the Hollywood glitterati, someone who was unattainable,” says Ferrer. “She was the girl in the little black dress who goes out in the world and makes it on her own charm.”
Her war-torn childhood
The daughter of a Dutch baroness and a British father who left the family when Audrey was 6, she barely survived the German occupation of Holland, which began when she was 11.
She had to hide in the basement for days without food. It was the winter of hunger [1944-45] when the Nazis starved hundreds of thousands of people in Holland in retaliation for their support of the Allies. For someone as delicate and fragile as Audrey, it had a big effect. She had a number of illnesses that she later saw in the children she met in Ethiopia and Sudan working with UNICEF. She often quoted a humanitarian worker who asked a child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and the child said, “Alive.” — Robert Wolders, her partner from 1980 to her death.
By the end of the war, she was very close to death. She survived by eating nettles and tulip bulbs and drinking water to fill her up. She was 167cm tall and weighed 40kg. She had jaundice and oedema, and suffered from anaemia the rest of her life, possibly as a consequence. She had a form of thrombosis that comes from lack of nourishment. It starts with the feet, goes up the legs, and when it goes to your heart and lungs, you’re done, and she was halfway there. She had nightmares about the war. She lived close to the train station, so she’d see the trains with the Jews leaving. She was the same age as Anne Frank and [ later] said: “That was the girl who didn’t make it and I did.” Her voice would crack, and her eyes would fill with tears. — Luca Dotti
Why she stayed thin
While her family believes early malnourishment may have contributed to her slim physique, the main factor was her lifelong discipline.
People think that because she was skinny she had an eating disorder, but it’s not true. She loved Italian food and pasta. She ate a lot of grains, not a lot of meat, and a little bit of everything. — Luca Dotti
We’d walk for miles. She could outwalk me. She had a healthy metabolism, but she was not excessive. She didn’t diet. We had brown bread with jam for breakfast, lunch would be chicken or veal or pasta, often with vegetables from the garden, and for dinner we often had soup with chicken and vegetables. She had chocolate after dinner, baking chocolate. She had a finger or two of Scotch at night. She didn’t drink wine. She’d mainly smoke when the phone rang. That made her nervous. She was afraid of bad news. —Robert Wolders
Her innate style
Even Jackie Kennedy copied her, but Audrey was not like Jackie, who’d buy 30 cashmere sweaters in different colours. She wasn’t a shopaholic. Audrey made her own rulebook with ballet slippers, cropped pants, boat-neck sweaters. She definitely did not have a stylist. That’s why she was Audrey Hepburn. She was one of the first to wear minis. Once, on a yacht trip, the maid unpacked her dresses and thought there was a mistake and said, “Madame has forgotten the bottoms.”
— Pamela Keogh, author of ‘Audrey Style’
It might be an exaggeration to say she thought of herself as an ugly duckling, but I think as a child she felt that. She was a tomboy and didn’t feel girlish until people found that magic quality in her. She believed in simplicity. In both the houses in Rome and Switzerland, if she needed a side table, she’d
use an upside-down basket until she found the right object. She didn’t mind splurging on things to keep her warm—cashmere shawls and sweaters—and she loved to buy beautiful presents, but she never went on shopping sprees. Before an important event she’d choose from a Givenchy fashion show, then they would modify it. Audrey might eliminate a flower or a bow. She didn’t mind wearing the same gown to different events. Her closet was very sparse, one-10th of what you’d expect. —Robert Wolders
Love and marriage
After her marriages to actor Mel Ferrer and Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti ended in divorce, she found love at age 50 with Wolders, a Dutch-born businessman, now 81. My dad was a wonderful producer and had the reputation of being the Pygmalion of her life. They lived so intensely during their 17-year relationship, it was equal to 35 years. I think he was a very tortured man, and self-centred. I think the intensity of their relationship sort of burned the candle before its time. She was very in love with [Andrea Dotti], and she was hoping it would be a counterpoint to what she had been through with my dad, but it came apart, and that was a major heartbreak. —Sean Ferrer
My father was nine years younger, and I think being with someone who is an icon, a goddess, it can be overwhelming, always being referred to as “the husband of …” I later had a conversation with him, and he was honest about his mistakes. —Luca Dotti
After I’d met her, a mutual friend prompted me to ask her out for dinner, but she said she had a night shoot. I thought it was her gentle way of rejecting me. The next day she invited me for a drink at the Pierre hotel, which turned into a three-hour talk. At one point she said, “Do you mind if I order some pasta?” After many long phone conversations, we realised we were meant to be together. She asked me if she could take time to prepare Luca and Andrea, her soon-to-be-ex-husband. When she saw him, Andrea came over and said, “You look very beautiful, you must be in love,” and she said, “I am.” — Robert Wolders
Audrey behind the scenes
At the house she wore very little makeup, a touch of lipstick. We’d visit and come downstairs for breakfast, and she’d be energised and bouncing around, coming down in her negligee: “Here
“I never proposed. Audrey would say, “Why mess with a good thing?’ ” —Robert Wolders
I am.” She wasn’t trying to be proper and correct. She was loose and relaxed.
—Michael Tilson Thomas, friend and San Francisco Symphony conductor
The first time I met her, she cooked cheese risotto. She was very sensitive and seemingly very fragile. I thought, “How is she going to act?” But in front of the camera, she could marshal all that into a great strength. She didn’t seem to be acting. She was just behaving in a certain way. She’d sit on my lap on the set. She smoked too much. It made me sad because her hand would shake a bit.
—Peter Bogdanovich, who directed Hepburn in her final role in ‘They All Laughed’, in 1981
Her final days
In 1992 she was diagnosed with appendix cancer.
The doctors gave her three months to live. She acknowledged being afraid of the pain but not being afraid of dying. She was desperate to get back to Switzerland. She would probably have succumbed during the flight from LA, so we went by private jet, made possible by Hubert de Givenchy and her friend Bunny Mellon, and the pilots descended carefully to reduce the pressure slowly. She was basically on life support. On the last Christmas, she asked a friend to buy three special winter coats: for Givenchy, Sean and me. She said, “Please think of me when you wear them.” Later on, when we went to bed, she said, “It was the most beautiful Christmas I ever had.”
—Robert Wolders