Audrey Hepburn’s Life in Photos: The Glitz and Glamour of the Late Film Legend

1952 New Stage

Upon spotting her in a hotel lobby, playwright Colette tapped Audrey to play her titular creation in Gigi.

“I said, ‘I can’t! I’ve never acted — I’m a dancer and have never spoken onstage!’ She said that as a hardworking dancer, I could do it. [Then] I started walking on a cloud.” But until it was a theater hit, it was “a very worried cloud.”

1954 Holiday Mode

“I was just sort of launched on this career,” admitted Audrey about the impact of winning an Oscar for Roman Holiday. “I went from one picture to the other, really, trying to sort of catch up with myself. I was totally unaware of the great significance of doing my first [American] movie.”

1954 Dream On

A rumored romance with her married costar William Holden seemed apropos for Audrey’s titular role in Sabrina. As she would reflect, the character is “a dreamer who lived a fairy tale, and she was a romantic, an incorrigible romantic, which I am.”

1957 After a Fashion

“I was so afraid of performing with Fred Astaire that I felt I couldn’t do anything,” she’d say of Funny Face. So thank designer Hubert de Givenchy for giving her confidence. “It was often an enormous help to know that I looked [a part]. Then the rest wasn’t so tough anymore. Givenchy’s lovely simple clothes [gave me] the feeling of being whoever I played.”

1959 Nun Taken

“After looking inside an insane asylum, visiting a leper colony, talking to missionary workers … I felt very enriched,” she’d confess of her research for The Nun’s Story. “[I developed] a calmness. Things that once seemed so important weren’t important any longer.”

1961 In Style

“I didn’t think I was right for it,” revealed Audrey about her iconic role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. “[So I thought] I should be a stylish Holly Golightly, even if that’s all that I can contribute.”

1963 Cary Away

Cary Grant was “such a lovely souvenir in my life,” revealed Audrey of her costar in Charade. “He had me down flat the minute he met me. I mean he knew what I was all about,” she’d say. “[He] was a vulnerable man, and he recognized my own vulnerability. [He told me,] ‘You’ve got to learn to like yourself a little more.’ [I’d] often thought about that.”

1964 Fair Game

While My Fair Lady won eight Oscars, Audrey wasn’t even nominated.

“They wanted to punish me because [Broadway’s Julie Andrews] didn’t get the part. I realized something then, that it’s always better to be thought of as the underdog and never the winner. The thing is I always felt like the underdog.”

1967 Can’t Wait

“I had been completely miserable while making Wait Until Dark because I had been separated from my son Sean for the first time,” said Audrey, who’d leave Hollywood soon after for him and youngest son Luca. “I couldn’t take the stress of being away from my sons. I missed them too much.”

1976 Family Bond

“After being offered so many films in which I would play the roles I used to play, it was exciting to have a chance to play a woman my own age,” she said of her onscreen comeback in Robin and Marian with Sean Connery. Plus, “[my sons] begged me to do the film. They were so thrilled at the idea of meeting James Bond.”

1988 On Hand

Leaving acting again to be a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador wasn’t a surprise since Audrey believed, “If you ever need a helping hand, it’s at the end of your arm. As you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.”

1989 God Knows

Steven Spielberg’s Always would turn out to be her final film before passing away in ’93.

“How shall I sum up my life? I think I’ve been particularly lucky. Does that have something to do with faith also? I know my mother always used to say, ‘Good things aren’t supposed to just fall in your lap. God is very generous, but he expects you to do your part first’…My whole life shows that.”