Audrey Hepburn: what was she like?
My image of her is always of her toting around some poor child in a developing nation from Point A to Point B for no very clear reason, because that's how they always showed her on the UNICEF commercials (or also as stalking around the African savannah in fabulous linen trousers and giant sunglasses while looking concerned).
She must have been a very good person to do all that work for that organization before it was fashionable; and she always seems like such a nice person in her movies. Was she really that nice? Clearly she had eating disorders (she looks like a skeleton in her last film, "Always"), so she must have also been troubled.
| by Anonymous | reply 16 | May 17, 2021 1:47 PM
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She seemed eating disordered, but she also literally starved while growing up in Nazi-occupied Holland, so that probably did a number on her metabolism.
She was complicated. Did a great deal for charity and also slept with a lot of married men with apparently zero remorse. I knew someone who was in a long-term relationship with one of William Holden's songs, and he remembered one evening Dad brought his current paramour Audrey to family dinner. Mrs. Holden knew they were sleeping together but she still gritted her teeth and got through the dinner. The boys didn't understand the significance of that evening until later in life. What the fuck kind of weird-ass mind fuck is that?
And Audrey went along with that, and in fact pressured Holden to leave his family to marry her. He didn't (though the Holdens did divorce later), but she desperately wanted him to.
So as I say...a complicated woman.
| by Anonymous | reply 1 | May 16, 2021 5:37 PM
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[quote] one of William Holden's songs
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | May 16, 2021 5:41 PM
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She often had chemistry onscreen with her romantic co-stars, but for the first ten years of her career they were so much older than she was it always seemed more like they deeply adored one another's company (as with Fred Astaire) than that they wanted to have sex.
The only actor who was her own age whom she genuinely seemed to have sexual chemistry with was Albert Finney in "Two for the Road." Did they have an affair off-set?
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | May 16, 2021 5:45 PM
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[quote]R1 What the fuck kind of weird-ass mind fuck is that?
William Holden was an alcoholic and eventually died from hitting his head on a coffee table.
So...
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | May 16, 2021 5:46 PM
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She was so "twee" in Breakfast at Tiffanys
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | May 16, 2021 5:49 PM
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In her memoirs Sean Philips said AH was the most ambitious actor she'd ever met. Aggressive.
| by Anonymous | reply 9 | May 16, 2021 6:20 PM
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Those of us working in the UN in Geneva during her short UNICEF gig resented her involvement. I say this respectfully because I think she was quite a nice person privately, but she wasn't terribly bright. It was Peter Ustinov who hooked her into UNICEF as he was a previous "ambassador" for the org. All these stars flitting about the UN are/were fairly insufferable.
| by Anonymous | reply 10 | May 16, 2021 6:35 PM
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I never got Audrey Hepburn. I don't find her interesting as an actress or particularly alluring but to each his own. Breakfast at Tiffany's is a terrible film.
| by Anonymous | reply 11 | May 16, 2021 10:10 PM
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She has a rotten cockney accent and couldn't sing well but did a very good job as Eliza.
| by Anonymous | reply 12 | May 16, 2021 10:14 PM
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She was charming in lightweight comedies. Also good in occasional dramatic roles like The Nun’s Story... but basically, a little of her went a long way.
| by Anonymous | reply 13 | May 17, 2021 12:14 AM
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She was great in War and Piece.
| by Anonymous | reply 15 | May 17, 2021 4:24 AM
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I forgot she was in that, R15. I wonder why she turned down Nicholas and Alexandra 15 years later? In fact what R9 says surprises me, as she also turned down The Exorcist and didn't appear ambitious to the point of being aggressive, at least later on.
| by Anonymous | reply 16 | May 17, 2021 1:47 PM
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