Audrey Hepburn

The most ambitious and personal account ever written about Hollywood's most gracious star-Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris is a "moving portrayal" (The New York Times Book Review) that truly captures the woman who captured our hearts...

With the insights of family and friends who never before spoke to a Hepburn biographer-and never-before-published photographs-Paris has created an in-depth portrait of the actress, from her childhood in Nazi-occupied Europe, through her legendary career, and into her UN ambassadorship.

She was the most beautiful film and fashion statement of her era, with or without the Givenchy designs. She was a ballet dancer, who never performed in a ballet. She was the world's highest-paid film actress, who never took an acting lesson. She was Audrey Hepburn, and she had the aura of a beloved real-life princess. With unprecedented access to family and friends, never-before-published photographs and meticulous research, biographer Barry Paris gives us a vibrant new portrait of Hepburn. Beginning with her childhood in Nazi-occupied Holland, he weaves the tale of her storybook career, its dizzying launch after the liberation, her title role on Broadway in Gigi, and her Oscar- and Tony- winning performances within the same year of her arrival in America. In the late 1950s and the 1960s, her star shone brighter with leads in Sabrina, The Nun's Story, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Wait Until Dark and My Fair Lady. In 1980 she met and fell in love with Rob Wolders, the widower of Merle Oberon. With his assistance, from 1988 until the end of her life, Hepburn became special ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund. Her trips to Ethiopia and Somalia demonstrated her whole-hearted and tireless commitment. Never before had so great a star so vigorously lent herself to such a crusade.

Publishers Weekly

The life of beloved actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) is stylishly explored in this lively, at times even frothy, biography from Paris (Louise Brooks; Garbo). Paris goes a long way toward explaining Hepburn's gamine appeal with his account of her hardscrabble, often terrifying childhood during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. For the rest of her life, he shows, Hepburn had a former refugee's infectious love of the limelight and the good life but also a charmingly modest understanding that most people suffer more than movie stars do. Hepburn's personal and professional relationships with her leading menWilliam Holden, Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Cary Grantare presented in gossipy detail, as is her often difficult marriage with actor Mel Ferrer. There are also informative accounts of the making of her films, with special emphasis on the controversy surrounding the casting of Hepburn rather than Julie Andrews as Eliza in the film version of My Fair Lady. Paris presents some new material from Ferrer, and some very witty new remarks by composer Andr Previn about the struggle over whether to dub Hepburn's singing voice in My Fair Lady, but for the most part this biography is a pastiche of earlier articles, interviews and biographies. Even so, it's the very model of a celebrity biographya little breathless, a little prurient, with just enough fiber in the way of psychological insight to make reading it a slightly more substantial experience than gobbling chocolates. Photos and filmography not seen by PW. BOMC selection; first serial rights to Vanity Fair. (Nov.)

Barry Paris is the author of the acclaimed biographies Louise Brooks and Garbo. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, American Film.