Audrey Hepburn is an international icon, known for her incredible screen presence, humanitarian work on behalf of UNICEF, and for being a stylish constant in the capricious world of high fashion.
For her fans, movie buffs, fashionistas and anyone caught up by the romance of classic Hollywood.
While her name is synonymous with elegance, style and grace, this poignant, funny and deeply moving biography, reveals the private Audrey Hepburn and invites readers to fall in love with her all over again.
Over the course of her extraordinary
life and career, Audrey captured hearts around the world and created a public
image that stands as one of the most recognizable and beloved in recent memory. But
despite her international fame and her tireless efforts on behalf of UNICEF,Audrey
was also known for her intense privacy. With unprecedented access to studio archives,
friends and colleagues who knew and loved Audrey, bestselling author Donald Spoto
provides an intimate and moving account of this beautiful, elusive and talented woman.
Tracing her astonishing rise to stardom, from her harrowing childhood in Nazi-controlled
Holland during World War II to her years as a struggling ballet dancer in London
and her Tony Award-winning Broadway debut in Gigi, Spoto illuminates the origins
of Audrey's tenacious spirit and fiercely passionate nature. She would go on to
star in some of the most popular movies of the twentieth century, including Roman
Holiday, Sabrina, Funny Face, The Nun's Story, Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair
Lady. A friend and inspiration to renowned designer Hubert de Givenchy, Audrey also emerged
as a fashion icon and her influence on women's fashion virtually
unparalleled to this day.
Behind the glamorous public persona, Audrey was a different and deeper person and a woman who craved love and affection.
Donald Spoto offers remarkable insights into her professional and personal relationships
with her two husbands, and with celebrities such as Gregory Peck, William Holden,
Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Robert Anderson, Cary Grant, Peter O'Toole, Albert Finney
and Ben Gazzara. The turbulent romances of her youth, her profound sympathy for the
plight of hungry children, and the thrills and terrors of motherhood prepared Audrey
for the final chapter in her life, as she devoted herself entirely to the charity
efforts of an organization that had once come to her rescue at the end of the war-
UNICEF.
