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Audrey Hepburn was unique: aristocratic appearance, sharp mind, sincerity and ease in communication - and all this combined with an almost ethereal weightlessness in her movements and superstar beauty. Men were speechless in her presence and were afraid to touch her: suddenly she would flutter like dragonfly wings and fly away like a fairy... She really did have some kind of magical gift. Everyone who dealt with her quickly became rich and famous. In 1954, at the age of 25, she met the young aspiring couturier Hubert de Givenchy and since then became his friend and muse. Givenchy sewed outfits for films with her participation and her personal celebrations. The handmade little black dress she wore to Breakfast at Tiffany's was auctioned in London last summer for $1 million.
Recipe for Grace
Waist - 50 cm. This is with a height of about seventy meters. The case is certainly extraordinary... Journalists unanimously say that Audrey Hepburn owes her wasp-like slimness to her parents’ divorce. She was 6 years old when her crying mother, pulling back the inches on her fluffy sides, threatened:
- Remember, baby, a woman should never weigh more than 46 kilograms. Otherwise, men will abandon her just like your dad abandoned me.
In fact, the mother was lying. It was not her father who abandoned her, but she who drove her husband to hell after she caught him with the nanny.
It is unlikely that the truth about beauty would sink into such a young head. Rather, Audrey later recalled (or invented) this incident in order to pamper the public with a tasty legend. The real part of the elegance formula was different. Hepburn could not live without a feeling of lightness in her body.
My parents had a gramophone.
- Mom, what is music for? - asked the daughter.
- To dance to it.
Since then, the girl has always danced for as long as she can remember. They even wanted to send her to a ballet school, but her excessive height prevented her.
Another reason for the delicacy of his features was his complete lack of interest in food. During the hungry times of the fascist occupation, she even had to taste the bulbs of the famous Dutch tulips. One potato a day and a few chicory leaves was the jumper’s usual diet in those years. Why jumpers? Because she jumped through a rope in the city square until the messenger arrived. The girl had notes hidden in her boots for the Resistance fighters.
One day the Nazis wanted to grab her, she ran away, hid in the basement and was afraid to leave there for a whole month. All this time she ate only what was in her bag: half a loaf of bread and six apples... In order not to be frightened by the rats scurrying here and there, she remembered English exercises, dance and music lessons. Metabolism after these terrible war years did not normalize until the end of my life.
They say that it was then, in the war forties, that touching, soul-stirring fear in her eyes appeared in her gaze.
Love Formula
She had already received her Oscar for her role as Princess Anne in Roman Holiday when she met Bill Holden on the next set. He drank a fair amount and was married, but this did not stop him from being known as a Don Juan. Audrey forgave him for everything that happened in his past. She endured lonely weekends when Bill went to visit his ex-wife and his two children... She was too young and too in love, so she had enough endurance for everything. She could not endure only one thing: the doctors’ diagnosis - after the operation, William could never have offspring again... She left.
William Holden and Audrey Hepburn in the film "Paris When It's Hot", 1964
And a year later she married another actor, Mel Ferrer. The wedding was modest. The girl herself decorated the wedding chapel with her favorite flowers - lilies of the valley - and put on a fabulous, airy white dress.
But very soon her bright life became darkened. The first film together with her husband, “War and Peace,” ended in failure (although Audrey Hepburn seemed to organically fit into the image of Natasha Rostova)… The first pregnancy was the birth of a stillborn child.
Fate seemed to begin to recoup the fact that she had parted with her first feeling so quickly and easily. She also failed to save her second pregnancy; she fell from a horse while filming... Years passed, but there was still no baby. And then she swore that
will give up cinema as soon as she gives birth to a boy or a girl.
In 1960, she finally had baby Sean... And then, contrary to her promises, filming began, one after another. And what films... “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, “My Fair Lady”, “How to Steal a Million”... When filming ended, she suddenly realized that she and Mel no longer loved each other. Or perhaps they never loved. She tried her best to save their marriage, but in the thirteenth year of marriage, it finally broke up. Rejuvenating apples
What should a woman feel if a man much younger than her is next to her? Delight, what else is capable of captivating a person for whom even young girls would run into the hunt? Or, on the contrary, lack of confidence in themselves and in their common future? What does she catch in the mirror: her satisfied look or a new wrinkle in the corner of her eye?
He was 30 when they met, she... 39. He fell in love with her as a fourteen-year-old boy when he saw her in “Roman Holiday.” By a strange coincidence, Andrea Dotti lived in this fateful city for Audrey, working as deputy director of the psychiatric clinic of the University of Rome. He was damn eloquent. And she had never received such powerful moral support as from him from any man.
On November 20, 1968, she received a divorce, and already on Christmas day she received a proposal and a ruby ring from her new chosen one. The wedding took place on January 18th.
Andrea Dotti and Audrey Hepburn. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org/ photo©ErlingMandelmann.ch
They rented a spacious apartment in Rome. On the top floor of an ancient palazzo. Audrey ran up and opened the window. Below, the water surface glistening like a huge snake with scales, twisted the Tiber.
- Divine! Finally I can start living the way an ordinary woman should live...
She went shopping and arranged her home. Previously, she liked to go to bed early and get up early, now she could be seen dancing the twist in a nightclub. Sent scripts were put aside without being read.
Four months after the wedding, she felt that she was pregnant. By this time, Audrey had already crossed her forty-year mark. It became quite obvious that the child, if, of course, he was lucky enough to be born after five miscarriages, would be the last.
Luka was born on February 8, 1970.
- Mrs. Dottie, do you like to remain just a wife? You won’t remain exclusively in this status forever, will you? - she was asked at a press conference.
- Why not, in fact, forever? — she answered the question with a question and added: “I have no desire to work.” You wouldn’t recommend that I turn to a psychiatrist for an explanation of the reasons for this reluctance... (Here was a clear hint at my husband’s specialty.)
— What do you consider the most important in life?
- Love and fear...
— Why “fear”?
- Because what you love most, you are most afraid of losing.
“If I ever lose Andrea due to infidelity, I will throw myself out of the window,” she once admitted to her friends. Fortunately, this time she broke her promise.
Audrey on screen and Audrey in real life were not the same person. Andrea was in love with a brilliant actress, a star of social parties; a quiet and modest woman was not for him. Scandalous photographs began to appear in the newspapers every now and then: Hepburn's husband and a lush blonde, a variety show dancer, a socialite... Perhaps behind the photographs there was nothing more intimate than a hand on a shoulder or waist. Besides, temperament is in the blood of Italians. His compatriots would sooner stop respecting Dottie if he turned into a modest puritan. But Audrey resembled an Italian only in appearance.
As often happens in couples before divorce, they tried to arrange something like a second honeymoon. The summer of 1979 was spent in Hawaii. But the miracle did not happen...
“I always remembered that I was nine years older than him,” said the actress. “And later I came to the conclusion that in a situation where the husband is younger than the wife, divorce is inevitable.” Friendship at first sight
However, after a few months, she refuted her own postulate.
— What is your goal in life?
“To please the ladies,” this is how the tall, thin student Robert Walders once answered.
By the time he met Audrey Hepburn, he was already over forty, he was 7 years younger than her. By the way, this difference could not confuse either him or her. Robert's first, madly beloved wife was already 25 years older than him, but she died, leaving the widower 2 million dollars.
Audrey Hepburn and Robert Walders visiting Reagan, May 1981
“Friendship at first sight,” is how Audrey described their relationship.
Robert seemed to fill the voids that had formed inside Audrey. He had everything she lacked: understanding, tenderness and, most importantly, an insatiable interest in her. The brilliance of the actress, the idol of millions, was not important to him; he appreciated the radiance that radiates from the man and woman Audrey Hepburn.
After forty, Audrey, although she acted in films, did so very rarely. And even
Few photographs of the actress from those years have survived.
“Whoever loves will remember it this way,” she said. “And let the rest not remember.”
They settled in the Swiss village of Tolochenaz-sur-Morges. Audrey planted her favorite lilies of the valley in the garden.
On behalf of the UN Children's Fund, she and Robert traveled halfway around the world: Bangladesh, Sudan, Ethiopia, Vietnam, El Salvador...
She was 63 when the doctor stated that she had cancer and had three months to live, no more. At the funeral, six men she loved stood near the coffin with her body: sons Sean and Luca, ex-husbands Mel Ferrer and Andrea Dotti, Robbie Walders and Hubert de Givenchy. Behind the coffin were millions who loved her and still love her...
Why we love Audrey Hepburn
For the ability to change men's views
Before filming Roman Holiday, the main character and main star of the film, Gregory Peck, was quite skeptical about his partner, an unknown British ballerina. They brought him to watch Audrey's screen test. Two minutes of viewing was enough for Peck to understand that he was not the main star in this film after all.
Later, when the film was already being prepared for release, Peck insisted that Hepburn's name appear as large as his on the posters. “I don’t want to look like an idiot when they give a girl an Oscar for this film,” Peck said cautiously.
For a thin waist
Before becoming an actress, Audrey was a ballerina. During World War II, her family had to starve, and the 45 kilograms of weight were the result of the lack of any food. But immediately after the war, Audrey became depressed and began to weigh almost 70 kilograms, which interfered with her career as a ballerina and was disgusting to her mother. Then Hepburn lost a lot of weight and quickly, and after that her weight almost never exceeded 55 kilograms.
For fearlessness
During the war, Audrey's family moved to Holland and settled in the town of Arnhem. There, Audrey once saved the life of an English paratrooper from the massacre of German soldiers. The underground worker told her that a paratrooper was hiding in the Arnhem Forest, who needed to be warned about the proximity of the Germans and contact him with a person in the village with whom she could find refuge. Audrey probably got this task only because she knew English and could convey instructions to the Englishman, but her then-undiscovered acting talent also came in handy. The cover was a bouquet of wildflowers, for which she supposedly went into the forest, and on the way back, when Audrey encountered two soldiers, she pretended that she did not understand their German words, smiled and handed them flowers. To her surprise, they took the bouquet, patted her on the shoulder and released her. The task was completed.
For impracticality
The film “Roman Holiday” brought Audrey not only an Oscar for Best Actress, but also wild popularity. However, this had almost no effect on the actress financially. Her next contract, for Sabrina, was little more than Roman. The fact is that Hepburn entered into a contract for a new film even before the release of “Vacation”, when its success was not obvious. When Hedda Hopper, a financial adviser to movie stars, reproached Audrey for her haste, she replied that it was not the money that was important to her, but the opportunity to remain a good actress. By the way, the actress advertised Givenchy (and she was on warm friendly terms with the designer of the brand) absolutely disinterestedly, solely out of friendly motives.
For the love of children
Audrey always wanted to have children: “When I was little, I would scare my mother by trying to snatch babies from strollers left on the street or in markets. The only thing I dreamed of was having my own children. “I always wanted to not only feel love, but also give it.” She gave birth to two sons. In the last years of her life, she actively collaborated with UNICEF, trying to help children from developing countries.
For elegance and the idea of a universal gift
If it weren't for Audrey with her ladylike habits and graceful manners, who knows who girls around the world would look up to. And so they have before their eyes an example of a diligent girl who looks majestic even in ballet shoes and behaves with dignity, even when the number of glasses of champagne allowed for a proper girl is doubled.
Besides, if it weren't for Audrey in Breakfast at Tiffany's, men would have to be much more creative in choosing gifts for their women. Otherwise, you can always bring a box from Tiffany and receive something much more expensive as gratitude.
Photo: Legion
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