On this date in 1929 Audrey Hepburn was born. 10 things you might not know about her:
She was born in Brussels, and her name then was Audrey Kathleen Ruston. During her childhood, she lived in Belgium, England and the Netherlands. She attended boarding school in Kent, but returned to the Netherlands for the second world war as her family hoped the Netherlands would remain neutral and believed it would be safer there.
She spoke five languages: English, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Italian.
As a child, she wanted to be a dancer. When she was 15, she moved from the Netherlands to London after accepting a ballet scholarship with Ballet Rambert. However, during the war, she’d suffered from malnutrition and was never strong enough to achieve her dream of becoming a prima ballerina.
Prior to this, though, she’d performed in secret stage performances known as black evenings because the windows were blacked-out so the German soldiers didn’t know what was going on. These performances were in aid of the Dutch Resistance. Audrey was recruited to the Resistance for other roles thanks to her fluency in English. She was given the task of bringing food to British and American pilots and telling them where to go to get help.
Her first acting role was in a documentary film called Dutch in Seven Lessons, dating to 1948. It was an educational travel film, in Dutch, in which Audrey played a flight attendant.
Truman Capote initially wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Holly Golightly. Monroe’s acting coach persuaded her not to take the part, though, because he didn’t think she should be playing a "lady of the evening." Another link with Marilyn is that, a year after Marilyn famously sang Happy Birthday to President John F Kennedy, Hepburn also paid a musical tribute to the president at a private party, the last birthday he would celebrate, in 1963.
For the film Green Mansions in 1959, it was suggested that Audrey take home the Deer that was to follow her around in the film, so it would get used to following her around. She did so, and the fawn, named Pippin, would even follow her to the supermarket.
She is one of just 14 people to date to win an Emmy (for hosting Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn), a Grammy (for a spoken word album Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales), an Oscar (best actress in Roman Holiday), and a Tony (best actress in Ondine).
In her later years, Audrey became a UNICEF Special Ambassador with her particular interest being getting food and resources to people in need, because she herself had benefited from this after WWII. She traveled to Ethiopia, Turkey, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, and Sudan. In recognition of her work in this field a rare white Tulip hybrid was named after her in 1990.
She died in 1993 at the age of 63, of cancer. After her death, Gregory Peck recorded a tribute to Hepburn in which he recited the poem Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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