Audrey Hepburn

Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Ixelles/Elsene, a municipality in Brussels, Belgium, she was the only child of the Englishman Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston and his second wife, the former Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat who was a daughter of a former governor of Dutch Guiana. The future actress's father later appended the surname of his maternal grandmother Kathleen Hepburn to the family's, and her surname became Hepburn-Ruston. She had two half-brothers, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford, by her mother's first marriage to a Dutch nobleman, Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford. She was a descendant of King Edward III of England and Scottish consort James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, from whom Katharine Hepburn may have also descended.

Hepburn's father's job with a British insurance company meant that the family travelled often between Brussels, England, and The Netherlands. From 1935 to 1938, Hepburn attended a private academy for girls in Kent. In 1935, her parents divorced and her father, a Nazi sympathizer, left the family. She later called this the most traumatic moment of her life. Years later, she located him in Dublin through the Red Cross. She stayed in contact with him and supported him financially until his death. In 1939, her mother moved her and her two half-brothers to their grandfather's home in Arnhem, Netherlands. Ella believed the Netherlands would be safe from German attack. Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945 where she trained in ballet, along with the standard school curriculum.

In 1940, the Nazis invaded Arnhem. During the war, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents, because an "English-sounding" name was considered dangerous. This was never her legal name. The name Edda was a version of her mother's name, Ella.

By 1944, Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the underground movement. She later said, "the best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performance."

After the landing of the Allied Forces on D-Day, things grew worse under the German occupiers. During the Dutch famine over the winter of 1944, the Germans confiscated the Dutch people's limited food and fuel supply for themselves. Without heat in their homes or food to eat, people starved and froze to death in the streets. Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits. Arnhem was devastated during allied bombing raids that were part of Operation Market-Garden. Hepburn's uncle and a cousin of her mother's were shot in front of Hepburn for being part of the Resistance. Hepburn's half-brother Ian van Ufford spent time in a German labor camp. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed acute anemia, respiratory problems, and edema--a swelling of the limbs.

In 1991, Hepburn said, "I have memories. More than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on to the train. I was a child observing a child."

Hepburn also noted the similarities between her and Anne Frank. "I was exactly the same age as Anne Frank. We were both 10 when war broke out and 15 when the war finished. I was given the book in Dutch, in galley form, in 1946 by a friend. I read it … and it destroyed me. It does this to many people when they first read it but I was not reading it as a book, as printed pages. This was my life. I didn't know what I was going to read. I've never been the same again, it affected me so deeply."

"We saw reprisals. We saw young men put against the wall and shot and they'd close the street and then open it and you could pass by again. If you read the diary, I've marked one place where she says, 'Five hostages shot today'. That was the day my uncle was shot. And in this child's words I was reading about what was inside me and is still there. It was a catharsis for me. This child who was locked up in four walls had written a full report of everything I'd experienced and felt."

These times were not all bad and she was able to enjoy some of her childhood. Again drawing parallels to Anne Frank's life, Hepburn said, "This spirit of survival is so strong in Anne Frank's words. One minute she says, 'I'm so depressed.' The next she is longing to ride a bicycle. She is certainly a symbol of the child in very difficult circumstances, which is what I devote all my time to. She transcends her death."

One way in which Audrey Hepburn passed the time was by drawing. Some of her childhood artwork can be seen today.

When the country was liberated by allied forces, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration trucks followed. Hepburn said in an interview that she ate an entire can of condensed milk and then got sick from one of her first relief meals because she put too much sugar in her oatmeal. This experience is what led her to become involved in UNICEF late in life