With an almost ethereal beauty and allure, Audrey Hepburn remains a powerful icon of popular culture despite having passed away over 25 years ago in 1993. A style icon, influential actor and humanitarian, Hepburn is best known in contemporary culture as the star of the 1961 Hollywood classic, Breakfast at Tiffany’s that would catapult the actor to international acclaim in the mid-20th century.
Enduring the hardships of WWII in the Netherlands during the early part of her life, once the war had ended in 1945, Audrey Hepburn moved with her mother and her siblings to Amsterdam where she began life on the stage as a ballet dancer. With a total lack of fortune thanks to the woes of the war, Hepburn worked hard to support her family, appearing in a film debut of sorts in 1948 when she appeared as an air stewardess in the educational travel film Dutch in Seven Lessons.
Slowly working her way up the industry, Hepburn accepted a ballet scholarship in London though quickly dropped the talent after her career in the art was deemed unattainable due to her height and weak constitution. Focusing instead on acting, Hepburn appeared as a chorus girl in the West End musical High Button Shoes among several other productions in her hunt for Hollywood stardom.
This tenacious persistence would help Audrey Hepburn to become such an iconic figure of influence during the remainder of the 20th century, with her mere image conveying a certain sophistication and class that Hollywood embodied in the 1950s and ’60s. Such evocative characteristics led the actor to be considered third among the Greatest Female Stars of All Time according to the American Film Institute (AFI).
