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Saturday, May 04, 2024


Happy Birthday: Audrey Kathleen Hepburn (née Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress. Recognised as a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend from the Classical Hollywood cinema and was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List.

Born into an aristocratic family in Ixelles, Brussels, Hepburn spent parts of her childhood in Belgium, England and the Netherlands. She attended boarding school in Kent, England from 1936 to 1939. With the outbreak of World War II, she returned to the Netherlands. During the war, Hepburn studied ballet at the Arnhem Conservatory and by 1944, she performed ballet to raise money to support the Dutch resistance. Hepburn studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam beginning in 1945 and with Marie Rambert in London from 1948. She began performing as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions and then had minor appearances in several films. Hepburn rose to stardom in the romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953) alongside Gregory Peck, for which she was the first actress to win an Oscar, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Award for a single performance. That year, she also won a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance in Ondine.

Hepburn went on to star in a number of successful films such as Sabrina (1954), in which Humphrey Bogart and William Holden compete for her affection; Funny Face (1957), a musical in which she sang her own parts; the drama The Nun's Story (1959); the romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961); the thriller-romance Charade (1963), opposite Cary Grant; and the musical My Fair Lady (1964). In 1967, she starred in the thriller Wait Until Dark, receiving Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. After that, Hepburn only occasionally appeared in films, one being Robin and Marian (1976) with Sean Connery. Her last recorded performances were in the 1990 documentary television series Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming. In 1994, Hepburn's contributions to a spoken-word recording titled Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales earned her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. She stands as one of few entertainers who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards.

4 comments:

Marian H said...

Aaahhh I was mildly obsessed with My Fair Lady when I was a little girl. :) Wasn't an Audrey fan especially, but that changed after I watched Roman Holiday in 2019. I don't think she always had the most complementary male leads, but she and Gregory Peck were *magic*. She's also very cute in How to Steal a Million, opposite Peter O'Toole. As a (moderate) feminist, I find the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope to be a bit sketch, but there's no denying she brought a lot of charm to it that is memorable in its own right!

Stephen said...

Happy birthday, indeed! I use a biography of her as book decor. I also have a couple of prints. She's absolutely adorable. Hard to believe my first exposure to her was a GAP commercial of all things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBjtSEZNkkE

@Marian I didn't even RECOGNIZE her until the horse racing scene, believe it or not. Roman Holiday was my first. I still can't believe they remade one of her movies...can't remember if it was Funny Face or Sabrina

CyberKitten said...

@ Marian: I think Roman Holiday is my favourite Hepburn movie.... Probably. I'm a BIG fan of Gregory Peck and I thought their chemistry together was very good. FUN film. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl can be fun, but too easily overdone or done lazily. I think my fave of that type is 500 Days of Summer - but then Zooey Deschanel makes that kind of role so effortless.

@ Stephen: Oddly my first choice of Birthday today was Jane Jacobs who was born today in 1916. But she got bumped for Audrey... Of course [grin]

Stephen said...

Jane is a great writer, but yeah. Audrey is a lot easier to celebrate! The Tom Hanks movie Larry Thorne riffed on the MPDG trope a bit -- Julia Roberts mocks it.