Belgian actress and humanitarian who began as a ballet student and worked as a dancer, chorus girl and cabaret entertainer. She moved to London in 1948 to study ballet. From there, she went into the chorus, and then to her 25 films. As an actress, she won an Oscar for “Roman Holiday,” 1953, and a Tony award for her performance in “Ondine,” 1954. She received four other Oscar nominations for “Sabrina,” 1954, “The Nun’s Story,” 1959, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” 1961 and “Wait Until Dark,” 1967. In recognition of her film career, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from BAFTA, Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and the Special Tony Award. Hepburn remains one of the few people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.
The daughter of an English-Irish banker dad and a Dutch Baroness mom, she had an idyllic early childhood in Brussels prior to the difficulties encountered during the Nazi occupation. When she was nine, her parents divorced. With the war; her mom, the Baroness, seeking a safe haven, moved with her daughter to her parents’ home in Arnhem. As a child, the young Hepburn, then known as Edda, carried messages for the Resistance in her ballet shoes. During the reprisals, an uncle and cousin were shot; her elder half brother was conscripted to work in a Berlin factory. The once chubby girl became gaunt and frail.
When she moved to London, she landed a chorus girl’s part. Three years later, playing a movie bit, she was spotted by the novelist Colette who instantly realized she had found the girl to play “Gigi” on Broadway. The role won her a Theatre World Award in 1952. The following year she played a princess in “Roman Holliday,” and captured the world.
A rail-thin gamine, she created a new image of beauty – and ineffable class. Her lifelong friend, designer Hubert de Givency, established an impeccable look, based on simplicity, and often copied.
In 1954, Hepburn married Mel Ferrer and had one son, Sean in January 1960; the marriage ended in divorce in 1968. She had suffered five miscarriages. She married Andrea Dotti in 1969 and ten years later, at age 40, had her second son, Luca; the marriage, once again, ended in divorce. From 1981 she and eight-year-younger Robert Wolders were companions. From 1966 she called home the quiet Swiss hamlet of Tolochenaz. She had an eight-year hiatus from films that ended with “Robin and Marian” in 1976.
In 1988, she became a special Ambassador to UNICEF, working actively in Ethiopia to combat world hunger. She made grueling trips to the Sudan, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bangladesh and Vietnam. “I do my best,” she said simply,” I wish I could do more.”
She was diagnosed with appendiceal cancer in November 1992, a disease which would lead to her death on 1/20/1993, Tolochenaz, Switzerland. She left the world as she had lived in it, no fanfare, no grandiose cortege, no wailing eulogies, but the love and respect of all whose lives she had touched.
Link to Wikipedia biography