Audrey Hepburn's Anorexia

TWIGGY!

Fuck!

It must have been a topic of some discussion because if you read old entertainment magazines from when she was a big star, they frequently mentioned how she almost starved as a little girl during the war. There are also the occasional gratuitous mentions of some food she just loves.

Nobody: ...

Photoplay: AUDREY HEPBURN LOVES POTATOES!!!

^ Yes, she loved a spoonful of mash a year

Anorexia did not becaome a diease of the month until around the mid-70s, so "no" although there may simply have been whispers that she seemed "too thin". Whether or not she was anorexic has been discussed here and elsewhere repeatedly. Google is your frind, but not the search function for this site.

The biography I read years ago said she was an extremely anxious person and when she was stressed, she didn’t eat.

I read she was plagued with digestive issues from starvation in her early life and during the war. It exacerbated her eating issues.

R5, "anorexia" wasn't even a word in the 1970s. In the 80s we heard about it. Karen Carpenter put the disease on the map.

It used to be back then...There's no such thing to be too rich....or too thin.

R6… I wish that was my problem… I’d be a bag of bones, too.

One of my favorite movies, OP. No matter her weight, she sure wears clothes well including plain, old jeans.

She was perfect for chic styles...she wore them well. She looked great in Breakfast At Tiffany's, her gamine look with big, expressive eyes.

Hepburn was 20 pounds heavier in Breakfast At Tiffanys

I dont know how starvation as a child will lead to people not being able to gain weight later on. Did people really believe that?

If you have an eating disorder as a young person, yes it can affect for body permanently.

Her father abandoning his family when she was small... stressful.

World War 2 and Nazi occupation... stressful.

The resulting starvation and malnourishment... stressful.

Why wouldn't she have eating disorders after all of that?

Wh

Severely anorexic women can't get pregnant and she had 2 kids while she was skinny as hell.

[quote]"anorexia" wasn't even a word in the 1970s

Yes, it was. Our neighbor's daughter was anorexic. I remember meeting her while I was mowing the grass and she scared the shit out of me.

Was she also too rich?

She suffered from anemia for a time.

Audrey Hepburn very thin in later years.

Anorexia was well understood in the '70s by medical professionals. And by anyone working in a ballet company or school. Very well known.

I told her she needed to lose a few.

Karen Blixen, aka author Isak Dinesen, died in 1962, but barely consumed air for her last decade let alone food. She makes Patsy Stone look like an amateur. Some attributed to her life long battle with syphilis, others as Anorexia Nervosa.

After posting the above, I thought M would never been thin enough to play late in life Karen, but G I think could pull it off. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants if G took over one of M’s greatest characters and then finally won an Oscar for it?

Some people are naturally, very thin. This worked for Audrey Hepburn and she was breathtakingly beautiful until she passed away.

Maybe the public at large was not aware of anorexia but it was definitely a thing. Known to many Read Edie thats talk about Edie Sedgwick battling Anorexia and bulimia in the 50s as a young girl. I have nothing to base Audrey having an eating disorder besides her extreme especially in her later years eating disorder but different things hint at it. She also was a ballet dancer in her early life and if you know about that world then you know how extreme it is concerning weight. I remember reading somewhere how Audreys favorite dish was Spaghetti Pomodoro and thinking it maybe her favorite dish but I wonder if she really eats more than a bite of it or how much reaches her stomach. I loved Audrey btw she was really lovely and too bad she went so soon. She’s what Angelina Jolie wishes she was.

R19...Rich enough..

I remember as a kid, comidians at the time making fun of her flat chest. It was like a running joke.

*comedians

She didn't have an eating disorder. Her youngest son published a cookbook/memoir of her favorite recipes about a decade ago.

Oh, r31, you sweet summer child.

Holly ate lightly.

Yes, Audrey had two kids, 10 years apart, but she had multiple miscarriages as well.

[quote] “I guess I began to resent food around this time,” Audrey quotes.

“That’s a strange thing to say about food -‘I resent it.’ You eat it, don’t eat it, like it, dislike it. But resent it?’

I actually got angry with it for being so difficult to come by and tasting so awful. I decided to master food; I told myself I didn’t need it. Audrey Hepburn Anorexia

I could sense it caused my mother great pain not to provide my brothers and me with the well-balanced and beautifully served meals she was used to, so I felt I could eliminate her problem by denying I missed the good things we used to eat. Of course, I took it to an extreme. I forced myself to eliminate the need for food. I closed my eyes to the fact that I was starving.”

“Jan (her brother) was the most hungry,” Audrey recalled. “That was clear. He’d sometimes hold his stomach and cry for food. I couldn’t stand another minute of it. I suppose Mother was hungry too but she was too sad to notice. I, on the other hand, was sure I wasn’t hungry. I had that one beaten. The only thing I knew was that I had to take care of them, so I devised this outlandish plan to make money.”

She then gave ballet lessons to young girls much like herself.

During the war, she survived on a bit of lettuce, the occasional potato and awful bread. Later on, she simply lived on tulip bulbs and water. She was painfully thin.

Even her janitors was chastising her about not eating with love. He said, “I was saving this red ball of Edam cheese for a real emergency and you are it!” Audrey Hepburn Anorexia

Audrey said, “just a small piece revived me; I tried some more but became sick to my stomach. My body chemistry changed during the years of deprivation, but my mind was also playing tricks.”

“If there is no food, I said to myself, then I’m not going to need what I can’t have. It was one of my first attempts at mind over matter, and at the time, I thought I was doing a great job.” [/quote]

Interesting read R35..

This sounds shallow but I miss the days when highly intelligent and educated, well bred people would actually consider going into acting on film and TV. It elevated what is often a sleazy industry, even if superficially.

I'm not a child.

She was much heavier when she came to London. Too chunky for ballet, definitely. She lost the weight when she started acting.

She's supposed to be a character in her early twenties and in her late 30s. So it works for TWO FOR THE ROAD. Finney, on the other hand, is a beefy slob in both time frames.

In any case, Eleanor Bron owns the movie.

Mia..

Audrey Hepburn was only anorexic by modern american standards. In Europe she would be completely normal. In Paris she'd be FAT

R26, Audrey Hepburn was not "naturally" that thin without extreme dieting before she DIED. Maybe she wasn't addicted to not eating and was easily able to pork up and have children when she had to - she had a history of miscarriages.

[quote]Anorexia was well understood in the '70s by medical professionals.

It was not understood by anyone.

R14 It can cause permanent organ damage.

"From November 1944 until May 1945, a period known in Dutch history as ‘the hunger winter’, Hepburn suffered terrible starvation. The Germans blockaded her area of the Netherlands, causing mass malnutrition that killed around 18,000 people.

Hepburn, 16, was reduced to eating tulip bulbs and trying to make bread from grass. She spent the war’s closing days hiding from the Nazis in a cellar.

Hepburn’s slight figure — her waist was only 20in — came not from any celeb-style fad diet. It was a legacy of the jaundice, anaemia, respiratory problems and chronic blood disorders she contracted in those desperate days.

After a lifetime of quietly suffering frail health, she died in 1993, two months after undergoing an operation for colon cancer."

I'm unsure. What are ya talkin' about?

When Audrey Hepburn Invited Sophia Loren To Her Place for Lunch:

Italian film star Sophia Loren has recently told during an interview in Italy how it was sharing a meal with another great cinema icon, Audrey Hepburn. The two lived for a while in Geneva, Switzerland, and they were neighbors. One day, Audrey invited Sophia to her place for lunch: “We were neighbors. One day she called us [Sophia and husband Carlo Ponti] and invited us for lunch. When we took our place at the dining table, she offered us a glass of wine; then we started eating salad with a tiny meatball. We ended the meal with fruits. Then she said ‘Oh my God, I don’t feel good. I ate too much.” Audrey cared a lot about her shape, said Sophia: “She was very thin. She didn’t eat a lot and she exercised everyday. She thought we shared the same habits. But when we came back home I was so hungry that I ate a sandwich with salami!”

R37, there are probably more actors with college degrees now than there were in the past. Tons of older stars weren't "classy" at all, they just seemed that way before the tabloids came around

R42, no, she would not be considered fat in Paris or anywhere else. Where do people get this shit?

Audrey Hepburn cookbook: main ingredient - AIR

So Like most anorexics, control (or the lack of it) was at the root of Audreys food fixation.

That was an interesting read, I’d just always thought she had lifelong stomach issues from the malnutrition she’d suffered during the war years

Nice try, 44, no cigar.

R48, it comes from Audrey apologists/worshipers. Note post war Audrey was plenty normal if thin. It wasn't until the 1960s that she got thinner and thinner and anorexic looking.

I worked with her on a PBS special about gardening. Very precise, smoker, very clean, polite, and I never saw her eat.

You mean a greater percentage do R47? I don't if I believe that but I do believe that an elementary education was a lot more rigorous then compared to now so it's a moot point. You can't tell me that the daughter of a Dutch baroness didn't have a better education than say, a journalism major from some Midwestern college. And you can tell by the way she moves and speaks that she was a very intelligent lady. Not much of an actress but has great star power and so fashionable and elegant. Even if it was a farce, it was a damn good one. I miss glamour.

She looked to be just average to slim weight before she became an actress

Just someone trying too hard to pretend to be French I think, r48.

Audrey was typical european upper class. They eat like it was a punishement, and after every meal, they utter the mandatory ' I ate too much ' with a sigh. I don't know if the ' trying too hard to pretend to be french' is about me, I' ve put too many people on block.

Audrey would have been perfect for the Princess Diaries if it had existed when she was younger, and then we need not have AnnE.

One of the reasons MFL didn't work for me as a movie was Hepburn's gaunt appearance making her look too old for Eliza in the second half. By the time she did WUD later that decade she had started to look even older.

Audrey Hepburn was beautiful and wore clothes perfectly. But imagine how she looked naked! No tits, hips, ass, nothing! No thanks. I'd fuck Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day over anorexia chick.

[quote]I don't know if the ' trying too hard to pretend to be french' is about me...

Of course it's about you, Frenchie. You misspelled 'voulez.'

Perhaps instead of trying too hard, you are not trying hard enough.

Bonjour R60 comme vas tu ? Je suis vraiment le française vœus savez

R59, not to mention visible spine and shoulder blades. ribs and pelvic bones sticking out to compliment her A- cups. Not a pretty sight.

I'm not a psychologist but I think the late Audrey Hepburn's issues with food pertained to her downright starving as a youth. If you read between the lines as to what R35 posted she could very well had been sacrificing portions of what she had to eat for her younger brother Jan.

She did stay rail thin just downright forever. I have no memory of her having gained much weight when she would work with UNICEF and she was of the age back then when most any ladies metabolism would have slowed down a bit.

Her overall situation is different. It's sad. I haven't a clue as to what the label would be and have no right to judge.

Audrey didn't have an eating disorder, she was just a typical european grand bourgeois. Never too skinny, never too rich. Bitch wanted to make others feel tacky and less than, so she carefullly controlled her food intake. Most my mother's friends are like that. Cunts. They invite you for lunch, eat 1 tiny transluscent slice of prosciutto and a tiny bit of cantaloupe, and then maybe1 rasberry, grain by grain, or half a peach ( with desserts forks and knives) and then sigh "I've eaten too much". You just want to slap them all day long. Cunts . And the french are the cuntiest of all cunts

Ironic how the most famous scene of her career has her eating a carbolicious pastry. You just know she threw up the contents of her stomach into a toilet later that day.

R65, I remember reading that they had to several takes of that famous scene because she hated danish and would feel sick after biting into it.

^^ It is a foul bread.

[48] Check out the cookbook on Amazon: Audrey at Home: Memories From My Mother's Kitchen. So the son is lying?

R61

Non. Vous n'êtes pas français ou française. Ou bien seulement grâce à vos papiers d'identité.

Ce que vous écrivez est une sorte de charabia ridicule et certainement pas du français.

R69 Je suis, il est-ce vrai, de double nationalité, mais totalement français très enchanté

R68 Audrey's brats would do ANYHITNG for a franc suisse. They sold their mother's panties for crissakes

Regarding her cookbook, don't some anorexics cook a lot of food, but don't eat it, or they're around food a lot? There was a Laura Secord store in the mall near me and the girl working there was obviously anorexic.

I don’t care about this battle of the Frenches going on . Does anyone? FFS! Oh and Fuck the French with a stale bagette .

It's not my fault, some stupid french person is harrassing me

Whatever you think of her films or her looks, I think she had some great beauty tips.

Underneath a lot of pain, I think she was a good woman.

R75, they forgot tip #10 For your nose, get a good surgeon

Funny because I also watched Two For the Road yesterday and had the same reaction. Audrey is positively skeletal. I mean PAINFULLY thin which is accentuated by her form fitting clothing. And I didn’t recognize Jacqueline Bisset in a supporting role.

Jacqueline looks terrible in that movie. She looks like a cow

Love LOVE Jacqueline Bisset in Two for the Road. She's warm and beautiful, and acts like a normal person. Later when she became a semi-star, the cold stare and British staccato turned me off completely.

isn't she an extra or something ?

R44, this logic is so circular. She didnt have a medical condition that did not allow her to gain weight then. So she had a food aversion, her hardware is fine, her software is a mess. Her PR made it appear that she cant gain weight due to some medical reason. She has no thyroid problem or GI issue that makes her not absorb food. None of you guys have pointed out a medical reason for her not eating, yall just keep on harping but “starvation!” As if thats a medical reason. The reality is, she probably couldnt gain weight because she didnt want to eat. Any malnourished kid from africa or any developing country can be re-fed slowly and give them access to food, they will be fine. I love Audrey but lets all just admit she has issues like all the other sensitive nutbags of modern day times. She is human after all.

r81 Well...she was.