Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Kathleen Ruston was born in Brussels in 1929 to a British father and a Dutch mother. She spent the Second World War in the occupied Netherlands, enduring hardship that marked her deeply. Trained in ballet, she moved to London after the war, danced in West End choruses, and was famously chosen by the novelist Colette to star as Gigi on Broadway in 1951, her breakthrough.

Her first Hollywood lead, in Roman Holiday, won her the Academy Award in 1953. There followed Sabrina, Funny Face, The Nun's Story, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Charade, My Fair Lady, and Wait Until Dark. With her gamine beauty and lifelong collaboration with the designer Hubert de Givenchy, she became one of the most enduring style icons of the twentieth century, admired as much for warmth as for elegance.

From 1988 she devoted herself to UNICEF as a Goodwill Ambassador, travelling to Ethiopia, Somalia, and beyond to speak for children in crisis, work recognised with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. She died at her home in Tolochenaz, Switzerland, in January 1993, of a rare abdominal cancer. Her legacy joins timeless artistry with profound compassion, a reminder that true elegance is kindness.

Film icon and humanitarian whose grace defined an era, from Roman Holiday to Breakfast at Tiffany's, and whose final years were devoted to the world's children through UNICEF.