Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn was a Belgian-born actress; born Audrey Kathleen Ruston, she became Audrey Hepburn-Ruston when her father appended Hepburn to his surname.

Sourced

• You have to look at yourself objectively. Analyze yourself like an instrument. You have to be absolutely frank with yourself. Face your handicaps, don't try to hide them. Instead, develop something else.

• I am more than ever awed and overwhelmed by the monumental talents it was my great, great privilege to work for and with. There is therefore no way I can thank you for this beautiful award without thanking all of them, because it is they who helped and honed, triggered and taught, pushed and pulled, dressed and photographed - and with endless patience and kindness and gentleness, guided and nurtured a totally unknown, insecure, inexperienced, skinny broad into a marketable commodity. I am proud to have been in a business that gives pleasure, creates beauty, and awakens our conscience, arouses compassion, and perhaps most importantly, gives millions a respite from our so violent world. Thank you, Screen Actors Guild and friends, for this huge honor - and for giving me this unique opportunity to express my deepest gratitude and love to all of those who have given me a career that has brought me nothing but happiness.
  • Statement accepting the Screen Actors Guild Achievement Award, read by Julia Roberts, because of Audrey's failing health. (January 1993)

• I can testify to what UNICEF means to children, because I was among those who received food and medical relief right after World War II,I have a long-lasting gratitude and trust for what UNICEF does.
  • As quoted at UNICEF.org

Quotes about Hepburn

Listed alphabetically by author

• This could be the last and only opportunity I'd have to work with the great and lovely Audrey, and I was not missing it.
  • Fred Astaire

• You take the Monroes and the Terry Moores, and you know just what you're going to get every time. With Audrey it's kind of unpredictable. She's like a good tennis player - she varies her shots.
  • Humphrey Bogart

• I think that there are few people in one's life that you never really feel that they're gone. I have to remind myself that she isn't around.
  • Blake Edwards

• You've got to learn to like yourself a little more.
  • Cary Grant to Hepburn on the set of Charade

• All I want for Christmas is another movie with Audrey Hepburn.
  • Cary Grant

• The slimmest waist since the Civil War. You could get a dog collar around it.
  • Edith Head

• She was the love of my life.
  • William Holden

• I was determined to wipe Audrey out of my mind by screwing a woman in every country I visited. My plan succeeded, though sometimes with difficulty. When I was in Bangkok, I was with a Thai girl in a boat in one of the klongs. I guess we got too animated, because the boat tipped over and I fell into the filthy water. Back at the hotel I poured alcohol in my ears because I was afraid I'd become infected with the plague." When I got back to Hollywood, I went to Audrey's dressing-room and told her what I had done. You know what she sad? 'Oh, Bill!' That's all. 'Oh, Bill!'. Just as though I were some naughty boy."
  • William Holden

• She's as good as the other Hepburn.
  • John Huston

• I can't stand it! I know I've got the best tits on stage, and yet they're all staring at a girl who hasn't got any!
  • Aud Johanssen, chorine

• Audrey was meek, gentle and ethereal, understated both in her life and in her work. She walked among us with a light pace, as if she didn't want to be noticed. I regret losing her as a friend, as a role model, and as a companion to my youthful dreams.
  • Sophia Loren

• I had plenty of qualms about Audrey when we met for the first rehearsal, but from then on, working with her was one big kick... Audrey and I decided we'd throw a party for the cast and the crew when the picture was finished. We went all out, had it catered by Romanoff's - nothing but the best. In the middle of the party, Audrey sidled up to me, jabbed me with her elbow, and said, out of the corner of her mouth, "Hey, Shirl-Girl, whattaya think the bruise is gonna be for this bash?"
  • Shirley MacLaine

• I don't want to be ungallant, but Audrey's too old and wrinkled for me.
  • Groucho Marx in response to rumors of an affair.

• When we climbed out of the airplane [in Beijing], to my amazement I saw about two hundred little Chinese Audrey Hepburns waiting at the airport. Roman Holiday was playing in China for the first time - thirty years after we made it - and attracting enormous crowds. Everywhere we went we saw little Audrey Hepburns with the bangs and the long skirts."
  • Gregory Peck

• It was my good luck during that wonderful summer in Rome, to be the first of her screen fellows, to hold out my hand, and help her keep her balance as she did her spins and pirouttes. Those months were probably the happiest experience I ever had making movies.
  • Gregory Peck

• After so many drive-in waitresses becoming movie stars, there has been this real drought, when along came class; somebody who actually went to school, can spell, maybe even plays the piano. She may be a wispy, thin little thing, but when you see that girl, you know you're really in the presence of something. In that league there's only ever been Garbo, and the other Hepburn, and maybe Bergman. It's a rare quality, but boy, do you know when you've found it.
  • Director Billy Wilder about Audrey Hepburn

• This girl, singlehanded, may make bosoms a thing of the past.
  • Billy Wilder