The Real Audrey

Her luminous looks were movie magic. But nearly 25 years after her death, her loved ones say it was the way she lived that defined true beauty

- Liz McNeil

She was one of the most stylish women of all time, but Audrey Hepburn wasn’t much of a shopper. She favored flats over heels and didn’t pluck her eyebrows. As for plastic surgery, “she never considered it,” says her son Sean Ferrer, 57. She smoked too much, enjoyed Scotch and snacked on one piece (or more) of dark chocolate after dinner. “She did not live life as an icon,” says her other son, Luca Dotti, 47. “She was always herself.”

While her doe-eyed beauty and gamine glamour (at 5'7" she weighed a consistent 110 lbs. as an adult) beguiled the world, privately the star of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sabrina led a complicated, often difficult life. She was insecure about her looks as a girl in Holland and never forgot the trauma ofWorld War II, during which she nearly died of starvation. She struggled in her two marriages but was a doting mother who found joy helping the world’s children with UNICEF. “She was never someone who wanted more, more, more,” says Dotti. “She was not a collector. She cared more about living beings.”

Nearly 25 years after her death from cancer of the appendix at age 63 on Jan. 20, 1993, her sons are offering some of her most personal belongings in a Christie’s auction on Sept. 27. Here, they and other loved ones share memories of the private Hepburn. “She was not part of the Hollywood glitterati, someone who was unattainable,” says Ferrer. “She was the girl in the little black dress who goes out in the world and makes it on her own charm.”

Her War-Torn Childhood

The daughter of a Dutch baroness and a British father who left the family when Audrey was 6, the wallet student barely survived the German occupation of Holland, which began when she was 11.