BIOGRAPHY: ENDURING POPULARITY
Audrey Hepburn to this day is a beauty and fashion icon. She has often been
called one of the most beautiful women of all time. Her fashion styles also
continue to be popular among women. Contrary to her recent image, although
Hepburn did enjoy fashion, she did not place much importance on it. She
preferred casual, comfortable clothes. In addition, she never considered herself
to be very attractive. She said in a 1959 interview, "you can even say that I
hated myself at certain periods. I was too fat, or maybe too tall, or maybe just
plain too ugly... you can say my definiteness stems from underlying feelings of
insecurity and inferiority. I couldn't conquer these feelings by acting
indecisive. I found the only way to get the better of them was by adopting a
forceful, concentrated drive."
To date, only one biographical film based upon Audrey Hepburn's life has been
attempted. The 2000 American made-for-television film, The Audrey Hepburn Story,
starred Jennifer Love Hewitt as the actress. Hewitt also co-produced the film.
It received poor reviews due to numerous factual errors and Hewitt's
performance. The film concluded with footage of the real Audrey Hepburn, shot
during one of her final missions for UNICEF. Several versions of the film exist;
it was aired as a mini-series in some countries, and in a truncated version on
America's ABC television network, which is also the version released on DVD in
North America. Emmy Rossum, in one of her first film roles, portrayed Hepburn as
a young teen in the film.
Hepburn's image is still widely used in advertising campaigns across the world.
In Japan, a series of commercials used colorized and digitally enhanced clips of
Hepburn in Roman Holiday to advertise Kirin black tea. In the US, Hepburn was
featured in a Gap commercial which ran from September 7, 2006, to October 5,
2006. It used clips of her dancing from Funny Face, set to AC/DC's "Back in
Black", with the tagline "It's Back - The Skinny Black Pant". To celebrate its
"Keep it Simple" campaign, the Gap made a sizeable donation to the Audrey
Hepburn Children's Fund. The commercial was popular, with approximately 200,000
users viewing it on YouTube.
The "little black dress" from Breakfast at Tiffany's, designed by Givenchy, sold
at a Christie's auction on December 5, 2006, for £467,200 (approximately
$920,000), almost seven times its £70,000 pre-sale estimate. This is the highest
price paid for a dress from a film. The proceeds went to the City of Joy Aid
charity to aid underprivileged children in India. The head of the charity said,
"there are tears in my eyes. I am absolutely dumbfounded to believe that a piece
of cloth which belonged to such a magical actress will now enable me to buy
bricks and cement to put the most destitute children in the world into schools."
The dress auctioned off by Christie's was not the one that Hepburn actually wore
in the movie. Of the two dresses that Hepburn did wear, one is held in the
Givenchy archives, while the other is displayed in the Museum of Costume in
Madrid.
Credit: Wikipedia