To mark what would have been her 90th birthday on May 4, here are 10 surprising (and delightful) things about the beloved Hollywood star and humanitarianAudrey Hepburn
She broke the rulesHepburn didn’t do what was expected of a Hollywood starlet. “She wasn’t overtly sexy in the 1950’s va-va-voom way,” saysAudrey Styleauthor Pamela Keogh. “She wore ballet flats and had a short gamine haircut. And she wore black when in those days, it was only worn for funerals. She was the anti-Marilyn. In the ’50s, there was a lot of matching accessories and extra frippery and Audrey liked simplicity and straight lines. Her style was a combination of European and bohemian.”
She loved food, and had a pasta “addiction” in particularDespite her legendarily slim figure – which ledBarbara Walters to ask in an interviewwhat she weighed – Hepburn especiallyloved pastawith pomodoro sauce and would often travel with dried spaghetti in her suitcase to cook up once she got to her destination, as her son, Luca Dotti, revealed in his bookAudrey at Home.“In Switzerland she had her own vegetable garden, with no pesticides,” notes Keogh. “She was farm to table before it was a thing. She was organic before anyone was. Very Italian and simple.”
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She only starred in 16 films“She only made a handful of films,” says Keogh. “She walked away at her peak. Where do you go afterBreakfast at Tiffany’s? And at the end of her life, she devoted herself toUNICEF.and lived in Switzerland with her boyfriend (Robert Wolders) who was fifteen years younger. Why sit around a film set?”
She wasn’t a huge clothes shopperDespite being one of the most influential style icons of all time, Hepburn wasn’t particularly interested in being a clotheshorse outside of Hollywood sets. “Rob Wolders said their big thing was walking into town and buying their vegetables,” Keogh explains. “She knew the designers and she bought what she needed and was given certain gowns to wear. At home, she would wear jeans and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt. Rob told me she did not have endless closets stuffed with clothing. She wasn’t Jackie Kennedy. Jackie, once she married Aristotle Onassis, had all the money in the world and loved to shop. Jackie bought multiples. Audrey shopped like an editor and bought what she needed. She wasn’t buying 30 cashmere sweaters.”
She found true love–at age 49“After the end of her two marriages, she thought love wasn’t going to happen for her again, and then Audrey Wilder (wife of director Billy Wilder) fixed her up with Rob Wolders,” says Keogh. “When they met at the Wilders’ home in Beverly Hills, they spoke Dutch because he was born not far from where she grew up in Holland. And they connected overtheir shared experience in the war.”
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She had no interest in marrying a third timeWolders once told PEOPLE that when he asked Audrey if they should consider marrying, she said “Why ruin a good thing?” “Rob supported her in her work withUNICEF, taking planes with her to war-torn countries,” says Keogh. “She counted on him. For her, it wasn’t about the ring.”
She was not an “Influencer”“Audrey was not one to overshare,” says Keogh. “She was a true movie star. Today, there are many Instagrams devoted to her. But she wasn’t one to stage pictures or push her name out there. Like the royals, she believed you don’t give away the magic. You don’t lift the curtain.”
She was a cool girl“For my book,Audrey Style, I interviewedGregory Peck,Nancy Reagan,Hubert de Givenchyand Roddy McDowell among others,” says Keogh. “All her friends said whatever you saw in the movies, she was a million times cooler in real life. She could be sexy, rambunctious and she loved a good Scotch and a cigarette. She wasn’t a perfect ice queen princess. She was sexy and funny and loved to tell an off color joke.”
She wasn’t afraid of aging“Audrey never tried to hold on to her youth,” says Keogh. “She didn’t live in the past and she was always open to the next experience. She never had plastic surgery. No Botox, no fillers. She was who she was. And while she was aware of the tragedies of the world and did what she could to try and right them, she retained a positiveness and youthfulness and a winsomeness which came from inside. And that’s why she was a legend.”
source: people.com
