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Audrey Hepburn in Brussels, Belgium, she was the only child of Joseph Anthony Ruston, an Anglo-Irish banker, and Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat descended from French and English kings. Her father later appended the name Hepburn to his surname, and Audrey became Audrey Hepburn-Ruston. She had two half-brothers, Alexander and Ian Quarles van Ufford, by her mother's first marriage to a Dutch nobleman.

Far from only being a beautiful woman, Hepburn was known for being humble, kind, funny and charming, and she lived the philosophy of putting others before herself. She showed this side particularly towards the end of her life in her tireless work for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

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Hepburn attended private schools in England and the Netherlands. Her father left the family when Audrey was young, at what she called the most traumatic moment of her life (years later she would locate her father and send him money). After the 1935 divorce of her parents, she was living with her mother at Arnhem, Netherlands when the German invasion and occupation of World War II occurred. At that time she adopted the pseudonym , modifying her mother's documents to do so, because an "English-sounding" name was considered dangerous. This was never her legal name.[1]

After the landing of the Allied Forces on D-Day, things grew worse under the German occupiers. During the Dutch famine over the winter of 1944, brutality increased and the Nazis confiscated the Dutch people's limited food and fuel supply for themselves. Without heat in their homes, or food to eat, people in the Netherlands starved and froze to death in the streets, particularly so in Arnhem, which was devastated during Operation Market Garden. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed several health problems. She would stay in bed and read to take her mind off the hunger, and she danced ballet for groups of people to collect money for the underground movement. The impact of these times would shape her life and values.

After the war, Hepburn and her mother moved to London, England, where she studied ballet, worked as a model, and in 1951, began acting in films, mostly in minor or supporting roles as , in which she played a ballet dancer. Audrey had trained in ballet since childhood and won critical acclaim for her talent, which she showcased in the film. However, her teachers had deemed her "too tall" to be a professional ballet dancer, since, at 5'7", she was taller than many of the male dancers. She was chosen to play the lead character in the Broadway play that opened on November 24, 1951. She won a Theatre World Award for her debut performance, and it had a successful six-month run in New York City.

She was then offered a starring role opposite Gregory Peck in the Hollywood motion picture, . Peck saw her star quality and insisted her name share top billing. For her performance, she won the 1953 Academy Award for Best Actress. Years later, when asked by Barbara Walters what her favorite film was, Hepburn answered without hesitation, with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, with whom she had a brief romance. Many believe Holden considered Audrey to be the love of his life, and she would go on to appear with him again in the comedy , Hepburn was awarded the Tony Award for Best Actress (1954) which, coming only six weeks after her academy award for , solidified her reputation as both a film and stage star.

Having become one of Hollywood's most popular box-office attractions, Audrey Hepburn co-starred with other major actors such as Fred Astaire in . Many of these leading men became very close to her. Rex Harrison called Audrey his favorite leading lady; Cary Grant said, "all I want for Christmas is to make another movie with Audrey Hepburn;" and Gregory Peck became a lifelong friend. Some believe Bogart and Hepburn did not get along, but this is untrue. Bogart got along better with Hepburn than anyone else on set; he later apologized to Billy Wilder for his behavior.

Hepburn's performance as "Holly Golightly" in 1961's resulted in one of the most iconic characters in 20th Century American cinema.

Hepburn was at the center of a controversy in 1964 with the filming of , due to her casting as Eliza Doolittle instead of then-unknown Julie Andrews, who had originated the role on Broadway. The decision not to cast Andrews was made before Hepburn was cast for the role, and Elizabeth Taylor reportedly lobbied for the part as well; however, Hepburn was awarded it by studio heads. Julie Andrews had yet to make . Audrey recorded singing vocals for the role, but subsequently discovered a professional "singing double" Marni Nixon had overdubbed all of her songs. She is said to have walked off the set after being told of the dubbing, returning the next day apologizing for her behavior. Footage of several songs with Hepburn's original vocals still exist and have been included in documentaries and the DVD release of the film, though to date, only Nixon's renditions have been released on LP and CD. Some of her original vocals remained in the film, such as "Just You Wait" and snippets from "I Could Have Danced All Night".

The controversy over Hepburn's casting reached its at the 1964-65 Academy Awards season, when Hepburn was not nominated for best actress while Andrews was nominated for . The media tried to play up the rivalry between the two actresses as the ceremony approached, even though both women denied such bad feelings existed and got along well. Julie Andrews won "Best Actress" at the ceremony. Andrews, however, later revealed she thought her Oscar win was just Hollywood politics.

From 1967 onward, after fifteen highly successful years in film, Hepburn acted only occasionally. After her divorce from first husband Mel Ferrer, she remarried Italian psychiatrist Dr. Andrea Dotti and had a second son, after a difficult pregnancy that required near-total bed rest. After her eventual separation from Dotti, she attempted a comeback, co-starring with Sean Connery in the period piece in 1976, which was moderately successful, but not up to the usual standards of a Hepburn hit film. Surprisingly, she turned down the seemingly made-to-order role of a former ballet dancer in . (Shirley MacLaine got the part, and the successful film invigorated her career.) Hepburn made another comeback try in 1979, starring in : Pulp author Sheldon's books were so popular his name was included in the film's title, no doubt leading Hepburn to think she had picked a winner. She hadn't. Among the reviewers, even Hepburn's admirers-- and there were still many-- could not recommend the film due to its hackneyed material.

Hepburn's last starring role in a film was with her new flame Ben Gazzara in the modern comedy , a small, hip and breezy picture-- a real departure for Hepburn-- directed by Peter Bogdanovich. A critical success, the film was overshadowed by the brutal murder of one of its stars, Bogdanovich's girlfriend, Dorothy Stratten; the film was released after Stratten's murder at age 20 and was not a major hit.

Hepburn's last film role, a cameo appearance, was of an angel in Steven Spielberg's , filmed in 1988. A rare Spielberg fizzle, few got to enjoy Hepburn looking, indeed, angelic, before the film was pulled from theaters.

Soon after Hepburn's final film role, she was appointed a special ambassador to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Grateful for her own good fortune after being a victim of the Nazi occupation as a child, she dedicated the remainder of her life to helping impoverished children in the world's poorest nations. Though she had done work for UNICEF in the 50's, this was a much higher dedication. Those close to her say that the thoughts of dying, helpless children consumed her for the rest of her life. She visited countries in Africa and South Asia as part of UNICEF programs. She dedicated herself to spreading awareness of the conditions of these nations and doing what she could to help directly. In one interview, she mentioned buying camels and solar boxes so medicines could be delivered to a village in the middle of a desert. She worked tirelessly for UNICEF and various causes in Africa and other South Asian countries, even in the last months of her life.

In 1992, President George Bush presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work with UNICEF, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded her The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her contribution to humanity. This was awarded posthumously, and her son accepted the award on her behalf.

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1652 Vine Street.

In the early 1950s she was engaged to the young James Hanson. She called it "love at first sight;" however, after having her wedding dress fitted and date set, she decided the marriage would not work due to the demands of her career. (She had the wedding dress given to a poor Italian couple, who still have it today.)

Hepburn did marry, twice: to the American actor Mel Ferrer and to an Italian doctor, Andrea Dotti, and had a son to each husband—Sean by Ferrer, and Luca by Dotti.

Audrey met Mel Ferrer at a party hosted by Gregory Peck, and quickly fell in love with him. After , in which she played a water sprite. Ferrer was rumored to be perhaps too controlling of Audrey, but in William Holden's words, "I think Audrey allows Mel to think he influences her."

She married him on September 25, 1954. The marriage lasted 14 years; their son was quoted as saying Hepburn stayed in the marriage too long. In the later years of the marriage, Ferrer was rumored to have had a girlfriend on the side, while Audrey had an affair with her handsome "Two For the Road" co-star Albert Finney. After the marriage fell apart, Audrey met Italian psychologist Andrea Dotti on a cruise and fell in love with him on a trip to Greek ruins. She believed she would have many children, and possibly stop working. Although Dotti loved Audrey and was well-liked by Sean, who called him "fun", Dotti had affairs with younger women and the marriage ended after Luca and Sean were old enough to handle it.

At the time of her death, she was the companion of Robert Wolders, a handsome Dutch actor who was the widower of film star Merle Oberon. She met Wolders through a friend, in the later stage of her marriage to Dotti. Six months later, they met again for a drink, which turned into dinner. They fell in love, and after Hepburn's divorce from Dotti was final, she and Wolders started their lives together, although they never married. In 1989, after nine years with him, she called them the happiest years of her life. "Took me long enough," she said in an interview with Barbara Walters. Walters also asked why she never married Wolders. Hepburn replied that they were married, just not formally. Hepburn and Wolders planned the UNICEF trips together. At every one of her moving speeches, Wolders would watch and sometimes shed tears.

In late 1992, Audrey began to feel pains in her stomach, which she thought might be due to a virus she caught in Africa. It was found to be cancer. According to her son Sean Ferrer, Hepburn's cancer was very rare and originated in the appendix. Audrey had surgery in a Los Angeles hospital, but the cancer continued to spread. She was disappointed the doctors could not do other surgery, and she apparently refused chemotherapy. Though she would die only a few months after being diagnosed with cancer, her last months reportedly were peaceful, and Christmas of 1992 was one of the happiest times of her life. [Ferrer has written a book about his mother: .]

Hepburn died of colorectal cancer on January 20, 1993, in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland at the age of 63, and was interred there.

People associate me with a time when movies were pleasant, when women wore pretty dresses in films and you heard beautiful music. I always love it when people write me and say 'I was having a rotten time, and I walked into a cinema and saw one of your movies, and it made such a difference.' for PBS, a nine-episode documentary series which premiered on the day of her death. She also appeared in an April 1952 episode of . According to some biographies, Hepburn claimed to have made "several" American and British TV appearances before , and a poster for a 1951 British public appearance listed her as a TV actress, but so far "Rainy Day" is the only example of this early work to have surfaced; a copy of this production exists in the Museum of Radio and Television archives in Beverly Hills, California and New York City, New York.

Some sources (including the Internet Movie Database) erroneously state that Hepburn had a cameo appearance in the 1963 film,

She won the 1953 Academy Award for Best Actress for Roman Holiday. She was nominated for Best Actress four more times; for (1967 awards).

There was Oscar controversy in 1964 when Audrey was not even nominated for her "loverly" performance as Eliza Doolittle in , possibly her best and most beloved performance. This may be due to the fact that her singing was mostly dubbed by Marni Nixon.

For her 1967 nomination, the Academy chose her performance as a terrorized blind woman in . However she lost to Katharine Hepburn (in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner").

Audrey Hepburn was one of the few people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award, although this distinction was arrived at posthumously.

Emmy Award: Outstanding Individual Achievement - Informational Programming (1993) for the "Flower Gardens" episode of her documentary series,

To date only one biographical film based upon Audrey Hepburn's life has been attempted. The 2000 American made-for-television film, starred Jennifer Love Hewitt as the actress. Hewitt also co-produced the film. The film received poor reviews due to numerous factual errors and for Hewitt's performance. The film concludes with footage of the real Audrey Hepburn, shot during one of her final missions for UNICEF. Several versions of the film exist; it was aired as a mini-series in some countries, and in a truncated version on America's ABC television network, which is also the version released on DVD in North America.

A handful of current actresses have been noted for their physical similarities to Audrey Hepburn, with some writers suggesting they might make good choices for a future bio-pic. Among the names often mentioned Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman, British actress Keira Knightley, French actress Audrey Tautou, and American actress Emmy Rossum. Portman once dressed as Hepburn for a modelling photo shoot, while Tautou more closely resembles Hepburn physically, a fact noted by reviewers of her film, Had a 20-inch waist. According to her son, Sean Ferrer, she ate more than he did, but because of her experiences during the war, her ballet training, and her regular exercise regimen, she never gained weight. Ferrer went into detail about how she cooked, with the idea that colours in a dish are not only aesthetically pleasing, but also inherently nutritious.Often credited for being an example for women that being healthy and thin are not mutually exclusive, it was later revealed that Audrey may have suffered an eating disorder. Friends described her as losing weight under extreme stress and being "strange" about food. Publicist Pat Kingsley is quoted as saying "If they even knew the word anorexia back then, I'm sure they would have used it to describe Audrey." Although possible, it is entirely speculative, though any weight loss or stress may have induced her miscarriages. It also contradicts what her son and others close to her say about her healthy eating habits. Hepburn herself said that she never overate because it was as if her throat closed up once she was full.Flemish, and Spanish. Spanish was previously unconfirmed, but there is UNICEF footage of her in Mexico speaking fluent Spanish to locals.Suffered several miscarriages in her lifetime which led to some depression. While filming The Unforgiven, Audrey broke her back while riding a horse and spent weeks in the hospital. She later had a miscarriage that was probably induced by the physical and mental stress.. According to Robert Wolders, before her death Audrey said she had dreams of Amish people building houses and constructing farms.Opera diva Maria Callas reportedly loved Hepburn's look so much that she adopted it for herself in the 1950s.It is sometimes claimed that Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn were sisters. The truth is they were only very distantly related, and certainly had never met before Audrey's rise to prominence. The closest relationship that has been identified for them is 19th cousin once removed. It has also been claimed that Audrey chose the last name Hepburn in honor of Katharine when she became an actress, however the record shows that it was part of her family name for some time before she entered show business.Hepburn is considered by many in Japan as a model for feminine beauty, a theme explored in Alan Brown's novel Audrey only flew coach in airplanes. She never desired to live glamorously. Her houses were comfortably large with extensive gardens, but without being extravagant.Sleeping Beauty's Princess Aurora was said to be drawn after Audrey Hepburn because the artist was in love with her charming looks.Has been celebrated in song on many occasions, most recently in the song "Audrey Hepburn" by British band ist.