Lovely Hepburn

Off-screen, Miss Hepburn remained faithful to Givenchy, an alliance that made her a fixture on the “best-dressed” list and made him one of the world’s most influential designers with such clients as Princess Grace, Catherine Deneuve and Estée Lauder clamoring for his clothes.  “For me, Hubert is the best designer there is. He is more than a dressmaker; he is a personality maker. His are the only clothes in which I am myself.” Audrey Hepburn

Near the entrance of the Hammetschwand lift offering tourists views of the Alps and Lake Lucerne, Audrey Hepburn signs autographs for a group of young girls. Even towards the end of her life, she found the fascination she sparked in others to be baffling. “It’s still something that is totally unbelievable to me,” she told Larry King in 1991. “I know it’s there — I’ve got to believe it because I see the reactions, I see the photographs, the critics and the people who recognize me on the street… but I’m still totally puzzled…. It’s very hard to say this without sounding soppy, but how is it it’s really me they want to talk to?” She went on to confess she never believed herself a good actress: “I just have to deal with my own feelings instinctively, and I’ve had great directors and partners.”

Although the public’s reception for the picture was mild, Love in the Afternoon remains one of Billy Wilder’s richest and most personal films. Audrey Hepburn was Wilder’s perfect heroine, ‘combining innocence and fragility with a sure sense of purpose and playfulness.’

Audrey Hepburn on the terrace of the Restaurant Hammetschwand at the summit of the Bürgenstock, Switzerland, circa 1955.

Audrey Hepburn knitting, photographed by Sanford Roth. 

Oh! ’S wonderful! ’S marvelous! That you should care for me!

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

Audrey Hepburn photographed by Michael Butler

Sabrina (1954)

Audrey Hepburn

Audrey photographed by Douglas Kirkland during the filming of ‘How To Steal A Million’ in 1963.

“Anne Frank and I were born in the same year, lived in the same country, experienced the same war, except she was locked up and I was on the outside. Reading her diary was like reading my own experiences from her point of view. I was quite destroyed by it… It was in a different corner of Holland, but all the events I experienced were so incredibly accurately described by her–not just what was going on on the outside, but what was going on on the inside of a young girl starting to be a woman…all in a cage. She expressed the claustrophobia, but transcends it through her love of nature, her awareness of humanity and her love–real love–of life.“ - Audrey Hepburn speaks about Anne Frank.

Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953).