Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn (4 May 1929(1929-05-04) – 20 January 1993) was a Belgian-born, Dutch-raised actress of British and Dutch ancestry.

Born in Brussels, Hepburn lived in Arnhem in The Netherlands during her childhood and for the duration of the Second World War. She studied ballet there and then moved to London in 1948, where she studied drama and worked as a photographer's model. After making a few films and appearing in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi, Hepburn played the lead role in Roman Holiday (1953), winning an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for her performance. She also won a Tony Award for her performance in Ondine (1954).

Over the next several years, she was one of the most successful film actresses in the world, and performed with some of Hollywood's most notable leading men, including Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper and Fred Astaire, with whom she danced in Funny Face (1957). She won BAFTA Awards for her performances in The Nun's Story (1959) and Charade (1963), and received Academy Award nominations for her work in Sabrina (1954), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and Wait Until Dark (1967). She also played Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady (1964), though the vocals were dubbed by Marni Nixon.

Her war-time experiences inspired her passion for humanitarian work, and although she had worked for UNICEF since the 1950s, during her later life, she dedicated much of her time and energy to the organization. From 1988 until 1992, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia. In 1992, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Hepburn was married twice, and had a son with each of her husbands, the actor Mel Ferrer, and the psychiatrist Andrea Dotti. From 1980 until her death, she lived with the actor Robert Wolders. She died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Switzerland at the age of 63.

She was posthumously awarded the The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for her humanitarian work. She received a posthumous Grammy Award for her spoken word recording, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales in 1994, and in the same year, won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement for Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, thereby becoming one of a few people to receive an Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony award. In 1999, she was ranked as the third greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.

Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston on Keienveldstraat (Dutch) / Rue Keyenveld (French) in Elsene / Ixelles, a municipality in Brussels, Belgium, she was the only child of the Englishman Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston and his second wife, the former Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat, who was a daughter of a former governor of Dutch Guiana, and who spent her childhood in the Huis Doorn manor house outside Doorn, which was subsequently the residence in exile of Wilhelm II, German Emperor.

Her father later prepended the surname of his maternal grandmother, Kathleen Hepburn, to the family's and her surname became Hepburn-Ruston. She had two half-brothers, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford, by her mother's first marriage to a Dutch nobleman, Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford.

She was a descendant of King Edward III of England and of Mary Queen of Scots' consort, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, from whom Katharine Hepburn may also have descended. This also made her related to other notable distant cousins including Humphrey Bogart and Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Hepburn's father's job with a British insurance company meant the family travelled often between Brussels, England, and The Netherlands. From 1935 to 1938, Hepburn attended a boarding school for girls in Elham Kent.

In 1935, her parents divorced and her father, a Nazi sympathizer, left the family. Both parents were members of the British Union of Fascists in the mid-1930s according to Unity Mitford, a friend of Ella van Heemstra and a follower of Adolf Hitler.

She later called her father's abandonment the most traumatic moment of her life. Years later, she located him in Dublin through the Red Cross. Although he remained emotionally detached, she stayed in contact with him and supported him financially until his death.

In 1939, her mother moved her and her two half-brothers to their grandfather's home in Arnhem in the Netherlands. Ella believed the Netherlands would be safe from German attack. Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945, where she trained in ballet along with the standard school curriculum. In 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. During the Nazi occupation, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents because an 'English sounding' name was considered dangerous. This was never her legal name. The name Edda was a version of her mother's name Ella.

By 1944, Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance. She later said, "The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performances." After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse, and Arnhem was subsequently devastated by Allied artillery fire that was part of Operation Market Garden. During the Dutch famine that followed, over the winter of 1944, the Germans confiscated the Dutch people's limited food and fuel supply for themselves. People starved and froze to death in the streets. Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits.

One way in which Audrey Hepburn passed the time was by drawing. Some of her childhood artwork can be seen today. When the country was liberated, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration trucks followed. Hepburn said in an interview she ate an entire can of condensed milk and then got sick from one of her first relief meals because she put too much sugar in her oatmeal. This experience is what led her to become involved in UNICEF later in life.

In 1945, after the war, Hepburn left the Arnhem Conservatory and moved to Amsterdam, where she took ballet lessons with Sonia Gaskell and studied drama with English actor Felix Aylmer. In 1948, Hepburn went to London and took dancing lessons with the renowned Marie Rambert. To help pay expenses while training with Marie Rambert, Hepburn worked part-time as a model for fashion photographers.

Her acting career started with the educational film Dutch in Seven Lessons (1948). She then played in musical theatre in productions such as High Button Shoes and Sauce Piquante. Part time modelling work was not always to be had and Miss Hepburn registered with the casting officers of Britain's film studios in the hope of getting work as an extra.

Hepburn's first role in a motion picture was in the British film One Wild Oat in which she played a hotel receptionist. She played several more minor roles in Young Wives' Tale, Laughter in Paradise, The Lavender Hill Mob, and Monte Carlo Baby.

During the filming of Monte Carlo Baby Hepburn was chosen to play the lead character in the Broadway play Gigi, that opened on 24 November, 1951, at the Fulton Theatre and ran for 219 performances.

The writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, upon first seeing Hepburn, reportedly said 'voilà! There's our Gigi!' She won a Theatre World Award for her debut performance and it had a successful six month run.

Her first significant film performance was in the Thorold Dickinson film Secret People (1952), in which she played a prodigious ballerina. Naturally, Hepburn did all of her own dancing scenes.

Hepburn's first starring role and first American film was opposite Gregory Peck in the Hollywood motion picture Roman Holiday. Producers initially wanted Elizabeth Taylor for the role, but director William Wyler was so impressed by Hepburn's screen test (the camera was left on and candid footage of Hepburn relaxing and answering questions, unaware that she was still being filmed, displayed her talents), that he cast her in the lead.

The movie was to have had Gregory Peck's name above the title in large font with "introducing Audrey Hepburn" beneath. After filming had been completed, Peck called his agent and, predicting correctly that Hepburn would win the Academy Award for Best Actress, had the billing changed so that her name also appeared before the title in type as large as his.

Because of the instant celebrity that came with Roman Holiday, Hepburn's illustration was placed on the 7 September, 1953, cover of TIME.

Hepburn's performance received much critical praise. A.H. Weiler noted in The New York Times, "Although she is not precisely a newcomer to films, Audrey Hepburn, the British actress who is being starred for the first time as Princess Ann, is a slender, elfin, and wistful beauty, alternately regal and childlike in her profound appreciation of newly-found, simple pleasures and love. Although she bravely smiles her acknowledgment of the end of that affair, she remains a pitifully lonely figure facing a stuffy future." Hepburn would later call Roman Holiday her dearest movie, because it was the one that made her a star.

After filming Roman Holiday for four months, Hepburn returned to New York and performed in Gigi for eight months. The play was performed in Los Angeles and San Francisco in its last month.

She was signed to a seven-picture contract with Paramount with twelve months in between films to allow her time for stage work..

After Roman Holiday, she filmed Billy Wilder's Sabrina with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. Hepburn was sent to a then young and upcoming fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy to decide on her wardrobe.

When told that "Miss Hepburn" was coming to see him, Givenchy famously expected to see Katharine. He was disappointed and told her that he didn't have much time for her, but Audrey asked for just a few minutes to pick out a few pieces for Sabrina. Shortly after, Givenchy and Hepburn developed a lasting friendship, and she was often a muse for many of his designs. They formed a lifelong friendship and partnership.

During the filming of Sabrina, Hepburn and the already married Holden became romantically involved and she hoped to marry him and have children. She broke off the relationship when Holden revealed that he had had a vasectomy.

In 1954, Audrey went back to the stage to play the water sprite in Ondine in a performance with Mel Ferrer, whom she would wed later that year. During the run of the play, Hepburn was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress and the Academy Award, both for Roman Holiday.

Six weeks after receiving the Oscar, Hepburn was awarded the Tony Award for Best Actress for Ondine. Hepburn is one of only three actresses to receive a Best Actress Oscar and Best Actress Tony in the same year (the other two being Shirley Booth and Ellen Burstyn).

By the mid-1950s, Hepburn was not only one of the biggest motion picture stars in Hollywood, but also a major fashion influence. Her gamine and elfin appearance and widely recognized sense of chic were both admired and imitated. In 1955, she was awarded the Golden Globe for World Film Favorite - Female.

Having become one of Hollywood's most popular box-office attractions, Hepburn co-starred with actors such as Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina, Henry Fonda in War and Peace, Fred Astaire in Funny Face, Maurice Chevalier and Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon, Anthony Perkins in Green Mansions, Burt Lancaster and Lillian Gish in The Unforgiven, Shirley MacLaine and James Garner in The Children's Hour, George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Cary Grant in Charade, Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, Peter O'Toole in How to Steal a Million and Sean Connery in Robin and Marian.

Many of her leading men became very close to her. Rex Harrison called Audrey his favourite leading lady (many accounts indicate that she became great friends with British actress and dancer Kay Kendall, who was Harrison's wife); Cary Grant loved to humour her and once said, "All I want for Christmas is another picture with Audrey Hepburn;" and Gregory Peck became a lifelong friend.

After her death, Peck went on camera and tearfully recited her favourite poem, "Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore.

Funny Face in 1957 was one of Hepburn's favourites because she got to dance with Fred Astaire. Then in 1959's The Nun's Story came one of her most daring roles. Films in Review stated: "Her performance will forever silence those who have thought her less an actress than a symbol of the sophisticated child/woman. Her portrayal of Sister Luke is one of the great performances of the screen.".

Otto Frank even asked her to play his daughter Anne's onscreen counterpart in the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank but Hepburn, who was born the same year as Anne was almost 30 years old, and felt too old to play a teenager. The role was eventually given to Millie Perkins.

Hepburn's Holly Golightly in 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's became an iconic character in American cinema. She called the role "the jazziest of my career".

Asked about the acting challenge of the role, she replied, "I'm an introvert. Playing the extroverted girl was the hardest thing I ever did." She wore trendy clothing in the film designed by her and Givenchy and added blonde streaks to her brown hair, a look that she would keep off-screen as well.

Hepburn had established herself as one of Hollywood's most popular actresses. Marilyn Monroe was not the only one to sing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to President John F Kennedy on his birthday: for Kennedy's next (and last) birthday on 29 May 1963, Hepburn, the President's favorite actress, sang "Happy Birthday, Dear Jack" to him. But she preferred a quiet life with family and nature. She lived in houses, not mansions, and loved to garden.

In 1963, Hepburn starred in Charade, her first and only film with Cary Grant, who had previously withdrawn from the starring roles in Roman Holiday and Sabrina. He was sensitive as to their age difference and requested a script change so that Hepburn's character would be the one to romantically pursue his.

In 1964, Hepburn starred in My Fair Lady which was said to be the most anticipated movie since Gone with the Wind.

Hepburn was cast 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 chosen. Hepburn initially refused the role and asked Jack Warner to give it to Andrews, but when informed that it would either be her or Elizabeth Taylor, who was also vying for the part, she accepted the role.

According to an article in Soundstage magazine, "Everyone agreed that if Julie Andrews was not to be in the film, Audrey Hepburn was the perfect choice." Julie Andrews had yet to make Mary Poppins, which was released within the same year as My Fair Lady.

Hepburn recorded vocals, but was later told that her vocals would be replaced by Marni Nixon. She walked off the set but returned early the next day to apologize for her "wicked" behaviour.

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: a section of "Just You Wait" and one line of the verse to "I Could Have Danced All Night." When asked about the dubbing of an actress with such distinctive vocal tones, Hepburn frowned and said, "You could tell, couldn't you? And there was Rex, recording all his songs as he acted...next time-" She bit her lip to keep from saying any more.

The controversy over Hepburn's casting reached its height at the 1964–65 Academy Awards season, when Hepburn was not nominated for best actress while Andrews was, for Mary Poppins. The media tried to play up a rivalry between the two actresses as the ceremony approached, even though both women denied any such bad feelings existed and got along well. Andrews won the award.

Two for the Road was a non-linear and innovative movie about divorce. Director Stanley Donen said that Hepburn was more free and happy than he had ever seen her, and he credited that to Albert Finney.

Wait Until Dark in 1967 was a difficult film. It was an edgy thriller in which Hepburn played the part of a blind woman being terrorized. In addition, it was produced by Mel Ferrer and filmed on the brink of their divorce. Hepburn is said to have lost fifteen pounds under the stress. On the bright side, she found co-star Richard Crenna to be very funny, and she had a lot to laugh about with director Terence Young.

They both joked that he had shelled his favorite star 23 years before; he had been a British Army tank commander during the Battle of Arnhem. Hepburn's performance was nominated for an Academy Award.

From 1967 onward, after fifteen highly successful years in film, Hepburn acted only occasionally. After her divorce from Ferrer, she married 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 Robin and Marian in 1976, which was moderately successful.

Hepburn finally returned to cinema in 1979, taking the leading role of Elizabeth Roffe in the international production of Bloodline, directed again by Terence Young, sharing top billing with Ben Gazzara -- with whom purportedly she had an affair on-set -- James Mason and Romy Schneider.

Author Sidney Sheldon revised his novel when it was reissued to tie into the film, making her character a much older woman to better match the actress' age. The film, an international intrigue amid the jet-set, was a critical and box office failure.

Hepburn's last starring role in a cinematic film was with Ben Gazzara in the comedy They All Laughed, directed by Peter Bogdanovich. The film was overshadowed by the murder of one of its stars, Bogdanovich's girlfriend, Dorothy Stratten; the film was released after Stratten's death but only in limited runs.

In 1987, she co-starred with Robert Wagner in a tongue-in-cheek made-for-television caper film, Love Among Thieves which borrowed elements from several of Hepburn's films, most notably Charade and How to Steal a Million. The TV film, which also starred Jerry Orbach as a villain, was only a moderate success, with Hepburn being quoted that she appeared in it just for fun.

Hepburn's last role, a cameo appearance, was as an angel in Steven Spielberg's Always, filmed in 1988. This film was only moderately successful. In the final months of her life, Hepburn completed two entertainment-related projects: she hosted a television documentary series entitled Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, which debuted on PBS the day of her death, and she recorded a spoken word album, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales featuring readings of classic children's stories, which would win her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.

In 1952, she was engaged to the young James Hanson. She called it "love at first sight"; however, after having her wedding dress fitted and the date set, she decided the marriage would not work, because of the demands of their careers that would keep them apart most of the time. Hepburn married twice, first to American actor Mel Ferrer, and then to an Italian doctor, Andrea Dotti. She had a son with each – Sean in 1960 by Ferrer, and Luca in 1970 by Dotti. Her elder son's godfather is the novelist A.J. Cronin, who resided near Hepburn in Lucerne.

Hepburn had several pets, including a Yorkshire Terrier named Mr. Famous, who was hit by a car and killed. To cheer her up, Mel Ferrer got her another Yorkshire named Assam of Assam. She also kept Ip; they made a bed for him out of a bathtub. Sean Ferrer had a Cocker Spaniel named Cokey. When Hepburn was older, she had two Jack Russell Terriers. The marriage to Ferrer lasted 14 years, until 5 December 1968; their son was quoted as saying that Hepburn had stayed in the marriage too long. In the later years of the marriage, Ferrer was rumoured to have had a girlfriend on the side, while Hepburn had an affair with her younger, Two for the Road co-star Albert Finney. She denied the rumours, but director Stanley Donen said, "with Albert Finney, she was like a new woman. She and Albie have a wonderful thing together; they are like a couple of kids. When Mel wasn't on set, they sparkled. When Mel was there, it was funny. Audrey and Albie would go rather formal and a little awkward. The couple separated before divorcing. During their separation, Hepburn lost weight.

She met Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti on a cruise and fell in love with him on a trip to some Greek ruins. She believed she would have more children, and possibly stop working. She married him on 18 January 1969. Although Dotti loved Hepburn and was well-liked by Sean, who called him "fun", he began having affairs with younger women. The marriage lasted thirteen years and ended in 1982, when Hepburn felt Luca and Sean were old enough to handle life with a single mother. Though Hepburn broke off all contact with Ferrer (she would only speak to him twice in the remainder of her life; at Sean's graduation and first wedding), she remained in touch with Dotti for the benefit of Luca. Andrea Dotti died in October 2007 from complications of a colonoscopy. Mel Ferrer died in June 2008 at age ninety.

At the time of her death, she was involved with Robert Wolders, a Dutch actor who was the widower of film star Merle Oberon. She had met Wolders through a friend, in the later stage of her marriage to Dotti. After Hepburn's divorce 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 then asked why they never married. Hepburn replied that they were married, just not formally.

In 1992, when Hepburn returned to Switzerland from her visit to Somalia, she began to feel abdominal pains. She went to specialists and received inconclusive results, so she decided to have it examined while on a trip to Los Angeles in October.

On 1 November, doctors performed a laparoscopy and discovered abdominal cancer that had spread from her appendix. It had grown slowly over several years, and metastasized not as a tumour, but as a thin coating encasing over her small intestine. The doctors performed surgery and then put Hepburn through 5-fluorouracil Leucovorin chemotherapy. A few days later, she had an obstruction. Medication was not enough to dull the pain, so on 1 December, she had a second surgery. After one hour, the surgeon decided that the cancer had spread too far and could not be removed.

Unable to fly on commercial aircraft, Givenchy arranged for Rachel Lambert "Bunny" Mellon to send her private Gulfstream jet, filled with flowers, to take Hepburn from California to Switzerland. Hepburn died of the cancer on 20 January 1993, in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland, and was interred there.

Soon after Hepburn's final film role, she was appointed a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Grateful for her own good fortune after enduring the German occupation as a child, she dedicated the remainder of her life to helping impoverished children in the poorest nations. Hepburn's travels were made easier by her wide knowledge of languages; she spoke French, Italian, English, Dutch, and Spanish.

In October 1990, Hepburn went to Vietnam in an effort to collaborate with the government for national UNICEF-supported immunization and clean water programs.

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, with her son accepting on her behalf.

In 2006, the Sustainable Style Foundation inaugurated the Style & Substance Award in Honor of Audrey Hepburn to recognize high profile individuals who work to improve the quality of life for children around the world. The first award was given to Hepburn posthumously and received by the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund, a non-profit organization that was started in 1994 in New York and relocated to Los Angeles in 1998 where it remains today.

The 2000 American made-for-television film, The Audrey Hepburn Story, starred Jennifer Love Hewitt in the title role. Hewitt also co-produced the film. It was well received with critics agreeing that Hewitt turned into a great performance . The film concluded 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. Emmy Rossum, in one of her first film roles, portrayed Hepburn as a young teen in the film.

Hepburn's image is widely used in advertising campaigns across the world. In Japan, a series of commercials used colorized and digitally enhanced clips of Hepburn in Roman Holiday to advertise Kirin black tea. In the US, Hepburn was featured in a Gap commercial which ran from September 7, 2006, to October 5, 2006. It used clips of her dancing from Funny Face, set to AC/DC's "Back in Black", with the tagline "It's Back - The Skinny Black Pant". To celebrate its "Keep it Simple" campaign, the Gap made a sizeable donation to the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund. The commercial was popular, with approximately 200,000 users viewing it on YouTube.

The "little black dress" from Breakfast at Tiffany's, designed by Givenchy, sold at a Christie's auction on 5 December 2006, for £467,200 (approximately $920,000), almost seven times its £70,000 pre-sale estimate. This is the highest price paid for a dress from a film. The proceeds went to the City of Joy Aid charity to aid underprivileged children in India. The head of the charity said, "there are tears in my eyes. I am absolutely dumbfounded to believe that a piece of cloth which belonged to such a magical actress will now enable me to buy bricks and cement to put the most destitute children in the world into schools." The dress auctioned off by Christie's was not the one that Hepburn actually wore in the movie. Of the two dresses that Hepburn did wear, one is held in the Givenchy archives, while the other is displayed in the Museum of Costume in Madrid.

She won the 1953 Academy Award for Best Actress for Roman Holiday. She was nominated for Best Actress four more times; for Sabrina, The Nun's Story, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Wait Until Dark. She was not nominated for her performance as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, one of her most acclaimed performances. For her 1967 nomination, the Academy chose her performance in Wait Until Dark over her critically acclaimed performance in Two for the Road. 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.

In addition, Hepburn won the Henrietta Award in 1955 for the world's favorite actress, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1990 and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1992. Hepburn was posthumously awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award later in 1993.

In December 1992, one month before her death, Hepburn received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work in UNICEF. This is one of the two highest awards a civilian can receive in the United States. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1652 Vine Street.

In 2003, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp illustrated by Michael J. Deas honouring her as a Hollywood legend and humanitarian. It has a drawing of her which is based on a publicity photo from the movie Sabrina. Hepburn is one of the few non-Americans to be so honoured. As well, in 2008, Canada Post issued a series of stamps based on the work of Yousef Karsh, one of which was a portrait of Hepburn.

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Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn

Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn was a nine-episode documentary television series first broadcast in 1993, debuting on January 21, 1993. It was the last project completed by actress Audrey Hepburn, who died the day before the first episode of the series aired on PBS in the United States.

Some of the gardens used in the show include: Claude Monet's gardens at Giverny, George Washington's estate at Mount Vernon, and Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris.

The complete series was released on home video in North America in the late 1990s. In September 2006, an extended DVD edition was released.

According to several biographies, Hepburn donated her salary for the project to UNICEF.

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Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales

Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales is a 1992 album featuring classic children's stories read by actress Audrey Hepburn. She was posthumously awarded a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children in 1993.

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The Audrey Hepburn Story

The Audrey Hepburn Story was a 2000 television movie biography of actress and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn. Jennifer Love Hewitt, who also produced the film, starred as the actress although her casting drew criticism from some of Hepburn's fans and the media. A pre-stardom Emmy Rossum appears during early scenes of the film playing Hepburn in her early teens.

The film spans from her early childhood to the 1930's which details her life as a Dutch ballerina, coming to grips with her parents' divorce, and enduring life in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II. Audrey then settles in the U.S. where she succeeds in making it big as a movie actress, in such movies as Breakfast at Tiffany's.

The closing credits include footage of the real Audrey Hepburn during one of the UNICEF missions she undertook near the end of her life.

Several versions of the film were aired. On the American ABC Network, it aired as a three-hour movie, while in other countries a longer version was broadcast over two nights.

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Jennifer Love Hewitt

Jennifer Love Hewitt (born February 21, 1979) is an American actress and singer-songwriter. Hewitt began her acting career as a child by appearing in television commercials and the Disney Channel series Kids Incorporated. She rose to fame in teenage popular culture via her roles in the Fox series Party of Five, as Sarah Reeves, and the films I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel, as Julie James.

As a singer, Hewitt has been signed by Atlantic Records and Jive Records. She is primarily known for her recordings in the pop genre and has a contralto vocal range. To date, her most successful single is the 2002 release "BareNaked", and the album of the same title landed at #37 on the Billboard 200. In addition, she has contributed music to the promotion or soundtracks of acting projects.

Hewitt's physical appearance has been the subject of much media attention throughout her career. Named the sexiest woman in the world in 1999 and the sexiest woman on television in 2008, she has been repeatedly honored by publications such as Maxim, TV Guide, FHM, and numerous readers of these periodicals. In 2007, paparazzi photos of Hewitt on a beach led to a much-publicized matter in which she defended her weight, and was supported by other celebrities. These incidents received coverage from People magazine.

In addition to acting, Hewitt has also served as a producer on certain film or television projects. Currently, she can be seen on the CBS television program Ghost Whisperer as Melinda Gordon, a young woman who can communicate with ghosts.

Hewitt was born in Waco, Texas, the daughter of Patricia Mae (née Shipp), a speech-language pathologist, and Herbert Daniel Hewitt, a medical technician. Hewitt grew up in Nolanville, Texas; after the divorce of her parents, Hewitt and her older brother, Todd Hewitt, were brought up by her mother. Her first name was given to her by her brother, after a girl he was fond of as a youngster, while her middle name, "Love", was given to her by her mother after her best friend in college.

As a young girl, Hewitt was attracted to music, which led to her first encounters with the entertainment industry. At the age of three, she sang "The Greatest Love of All" at a livestock show. Just a year after that, at a restaurant-dance hall, she entertained an audience with her version of "Help Me Make It Through the Night". By the time she was five, Hewitt already had tap dancing and ballet in her portfolio. At nine, she became a member of the Texas Show Team (which also toured in the Soviet Union). At the age of ten, at the suggestion of talent scouts and winning the title of Texas Our Little Miss Talent Winner, she moved to Los Angeles, California, with her mother to pursue a career in both acting and singing. In Los Angeles, Hewitt attended Lincoln High School where her classmates included Jonathan Neville, who later in life became a talent scout and recommended Hewitt for her role in Party of Five.She was also a girl scout.

After moving to Los Angeles, Hewitt appeared in more than twenty television commercials. Her first break came as a child actor on the Disney Channel variety show Kids Incorporated (1989–1991), where she was credited as just Love Hewitt. During this time she danced in and sang all the songs for a live action video called Dance! Workout With Barbie released by Buena Vista.

In 1993, she played Pierce Brosnan's daughter in a pilot for NBC called Running Wilde, which featured Brosnan as a reporter for Auto World magazine whose stories cover his own wild auto adventures. However, the series wasn't picked up and the pilot never aired. Hewitt later had roles in several short-lived television series, such as Fox's Shaky Ground (1992–1993), ABC's The Byrds of Paradise (1994), and McKenna (1994–1995), and finally became a young star after landing the role of Sarah Reeves on the popular Fox Television show Party of Five (1995–1999). She assumed the role of Sarah after joining that show during its second season and continued it on the short-lived Party of Five spin-off, Time of Your Life (1999), which she also co-produced. The show was cancelled after only half a season.

Hewitt made her film debut in the independent film Munchie (1992). She became a film star after a lead role in the horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), which enjoyed great box-office success (125,000,000 U.S. dollars worldwide). The film made Hewitt and her co-stars Freddie Prinze Jr., Ryan Phillippe, and Sarah Michelle Gellar some of the most popular young stars in the USA. She also appeared in the sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), which, though ultimately not as successful as the first film, took in more money on its opening weekend. Other notable film roles have included the high-school comedy Can't Hardly Wait (1998) and a starring role with Sigourney Weaver in the romantic comedy Heartbreakers (2001).

In 2000, Hewitt appeared in The Audrey Hepburn Story. That same year, she was the "most popular actress on television" due to her Q-rating (a measurement of a celebrity's popularity) of thirty-seven. For that reason, Nokia chose her to become its spokesperson, because of her "fresh image", and her being "a symbol of youthfulness and wholesomeness".

In 2001, she appeared in the music video for the Enrique Iglesias song, "Hero", as the singer's love interest.

Hewitt wrote "I'm Gonna Love You" for the movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame II because, although she was a well-known singer at the time, her character Madellaine was the only character who didn't sing in the movie. The song won an award for Best Song on DVD Awards.

Since September 2005, Hewitt has starred in the television series Ghost Whisperer. In Australia, Ghost Whisperer has been popular since its introduction; in the United States, the show averages 9–11 million viewers for each new episode. Hewitt has also auditioned for many roles. She was asked to play Juliet in Romeo + Juliet, but the director felt she wasn't modern looking. The role went to Claire Danes. She also had to give up the role of Darlene in Brokedown Palace because of scheduling conflicts.

After she joined the cast of Party of Five in 1995, she signed to Atlantic Records, who rushed her first single and second album, Let's Go Bang, out in October.

Juggling her music career with her acting career, she recorded her follow-up in 1996. The first single, "No Ordinary Love", failed to chart and led to the album doing the same. Atlantic dropped Hewitt, who didn't return to the music scene for 3 years.

In 1999, she recorded the single "How Do I Deal" for the I Still Know What You Did Last Summer soundtrack. The song became Hewitt's first charting single by climbing to #59 on the Hot 100 and #36 on the Top 40 Mainstream. It also reached #8 in Australia.

In 2002, Hewitt signed to Jive Records and recorded her fourth album with singer/songwriter/producer Meredith Brooks. The first single, "BareNaked", became her biggest radio hit to date when it peaked at #24 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart, #31 on the Adult Top 40 and #25 on the Top 40 Mainstream. It also climbed to #6 in Australia and #33 in the Netherlands. The moderate success of the single propelled her album of the same name to peak at #37 on the Billboard 200 and #31 in Australia. However, it only remained on the chart for 3 weeks. The second single, "Can I Go Now", failed to chart in the US, while managing to peak at #8 in the Netherlands and #12 in Australia.

Since 2003, Hewitt hasn't actively done anything in the music industry, but a compilation called Cool with You: The Platinum Collection was released in Asia.

In addition to starring in the 2004 film If Only, Hewitt also co-wrote and performed two songs for its soundtrack: "Love Will Show You Everything" and "Take My Heart Back".

She also appeared in the 2004 made-for-television musical A Christmas Carol, performing the singing role of Ebenezer Scrooge's fiance Emily.

Hewitt is an honorary godparent of the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund.

She has dated singer-guitarist John Mayer, talk show host Carson Daly, actor/model Kip Pardue, writer Chris Benson, singer-songwriter Rich Cronin, actor and singer Joey Lawrence, professional kayaker Brad Ludden, actor Will Friedle, and singer Enrique Iglesias.

On January 5, 2009, People magazine reported that Hewitt and McCall have called off their engagement.

In 2002, conspiracy theorist and former social worker Diana Napolis was arrested for stalking and uttering death threats against Hewitt after "verbally confronting" the actress at the 2002 Grammy Awards, and the subsequent day attempted to pose as a friend to enter the premiere of The Tuxedo. Napolis also admitted to becoming involved in a shoving match with Hewitt's mother while confronting the actress. Napolis accused Hewitt, along with director Steven Spielberg, of controlling her thoughts through "cybertronic" technology and being part of a Satanic conspiracy against her. Napolis was charged with six felonies related to the incidents pleading guilty after a year of involuntary commitment and released on bail with a condition that she was barred from contact with both Spielberg and Hewitt.

Between the years of 1997 and 2008, Hewitt was rated one of the sexiest women in the world by the magazine FHM, and in 2006 and 2008 by Maxim magazine.

In 2005, Hewitt appeared in a Hanes advertising campaign titled "Look who we've got our Hanes on now". The campaign also featured other celebrities such as Michael Jordan, Charlie Sheen, Cuba Gooding Jr., Marisa Tomei, Damon Wayans, Kevin Bacon, Hugh Hefner, Matthew Perry, and on Spanish-language advertising, Aracely Arambula, and Pablo Montero. In 2006, the campaign added Christina Applegate to their lineup.

Hewitt has appeared in a "Don't Mess With Texas" commercial. This commercial also features fellow Texans: Matthew McConaughey, Los Lonely Boys, LeeAnn Womack, Lance Armstrong, Owen Wilson, and Erykah Badu. Seattle Seahawks running back Julius Jones, Chuck Norris (star of Walker Texas Ranger), and Janine Turner are also seen in the DMWT commercial.

She also appears in a commercial for Rodan & Fields acne medication Proactiv.

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