Hepburn Nazi secrets shame

AuDrEy Hepburn lived in fear that her mother’s admiration for Adolf Hitler would become public knowledge and derail her career, a biography claims.

The actress, pictured, was terrified her fans would discover that her mother Ella van Heemstra met Hitler at his Munich HQ in 1935 – where she was ‘over the moon’ when he kissed her hand.

Author robert Matzen writes in ‘Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II’ that she took the truth ‘to her grave’ as she did want her family to be seen as Nazi sympathisers.

After moving from Holland to America, where she won an Oscar for roman Holiday, she dodged questions about the Germans as it was ‘too much of a risk’, Matzen writes. It is claimed Hepburn, who died at 63 in 1993, did not want people to know her mother was a ‘lipstick Nazi’ who dated a German officer.

Matzen writes that Hepburn’s mother and father were ‘enthralled’ by Hitler, and that her mother gazed into his ‘deep blue eyes’ when she met him.