Audrey Hepburn - Inside Her PRIVATE WORLD

THE LEGENDARY ACTRESS AND FASHION ICON TRIUMPHED OVER INSECURITY TO FIND HER TRUE HAPPINESS

- By LISA CHAMBERS

When the fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy prepared to meet “Miss Hepburn” for the first time in his Paris salon in the early 1950s, he was surprised to find a young woman in capri pants, ballet flats, a jersey top and a straw boater that read “Venezia.” Audrey Hepburn, not yet a star, wasn’t who the designer expected. “He thought he was meeting Katharine Hepburn!” says author Tom Santopietro. But that moment marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship and one of the most iconic fashion partnerships in history. “His clothes are the only ones I feel myself in,” Audrey once said. “He is more than a designer — he is a creator of personality.”

Some may be surprised to learn that Audrey wanted someone to help shape her “personality,” but in his new book, Audrey Hepburn: A Life of Beautiful Uncertainty, Santopietro explores the woman behind the legend and reveals surprising aspects of the glamorous actress. “She never believed she was particularly beautiful,” he tells Closer, “never believed she was particularly talented.” Born into a fractured family and raised partly in Nazi-occupied Holland, Audrey had to overcome early insecurities as she developed confidence and grew into an award-winning performer. With motherhood, her later work with UNICEF, and her loving relationship with actor Robert Wolders, Audrey banished her demons and found her true calling in life. As she said in a 1988 interview, “I’ve had so much good fortune that I’ve learned to live with myself.”

Her blessings took a while to arrive. Her mother was a Dutch baroness. Her English banker father also came from privilege, but he walked out when Audrey was 6. “It was like he went out to get a pack of cigarettes and never returned,” says Santopietro. “Throughout the rest of her life, she said it was the most difficult thing she had ever experienced, including her miscarriages.”