AUDREY Hepburn

Still celebrated as the epitome of style and elegance 30 years after her death, Audrey Hepburn appeared to have it all. But as Kylie Walters reports, the silver screen star's gorgeous smile hid a traumatic childhood

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Sitting in a Swedish restaurant in 1958 across from Otto Frank - the father of Jewish schoolgirl Anne (whose diary about life under Nazi occupation during World War II has sold more than 30 million copies) - Audrey Hepburn took a deep breath as she steeled herself to utter some of the hardest words she'd ever have to say. The former businessman was working with Hollywood director George Stevens to turn his late daughter's memoir into a film and there was no-one he wanted to portray his beloved Anne more than her. So far Hepburn had resisted, but he hoped meeting in person would change her mind. "Otto, it's been wonderful spending this time with you but I'm afraid I can't do this movie," Hepburn regretfully told him. "I just can't."

While the gamine beauty who charmed the world on the silver screen mightn't have appeared to have much in common with the teen who'd spent two years hiding in a secret annexe before her murder in a German concentration camp, Hepburn couldn't accept the role as it hit far too close to home.

Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Brussels on May 4, 1929, Hepburn was the daughter of Dutch Baroness Ella Van Heemstra and British banker Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston. Her first tragedy in life came at age six when her father, a Nazi sympathiser, abandoned his family to move to London and work with the British Union of Fascists. "[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 later recalled.