Nosheen Iqbal: 'The best-kept secret about Audrey Hepburn is that she was so sad’
She was once the most publicly adored woman in the world, yet felt a deep lack of love in her private life. Now a new film about Audrey Hepburn, the first made with the consent of her family, reveals her extraordinary sadness and pain as she candidly discusses the traumas inflicted by her father, her marriages and her miscarriages. Audrey, a documentary by 26-year-old British film-maker Helena Coan, comes from the producers of the Bafta-nominated McQueen, about the life of fashion designer Alexander McQueen, and is packed with revelations about one of the most enduring of all Hollywood’s stars.
Hepburn with Dove, south of France, 1966 - Terry O’Neill/Iconic Images
In an interview recorded by a Life magazine
journalist in 1992 and shown for the first time, Hepburn talks about the impact
of her parents’ divorce when she was six years old. “[My father leaving] was
the first big blow I had as a child, it was a trauma that left a very big mark
on me, it left me insecure for life,” she reveals. “He disappeared one day,
mother explained he had gone away on a trip and was not coming back. Mother
wouldn’t stop crying, I would just try and be with her but as a child you can’t
quite understand.”
Sinatra swinging, Hepburn swimming: Terry O’Neill’s most
celebrated images – in pictures
Throughout her career, Hepburn came to be seen as the
epitome of elegance and grace. Born into European nobility in 1929 but
devastated by the impact of the second world war as a child in the Netherlands,
Hepburn kept a tight lid on her personal problems until her death in 1993 of
cancer…
