Close Up: Timeless Hepburn

"She was my mother first, then she was my great friend. I then realized she was an actress. Later I realized she was a pretty good actress. But it really wasn't until she passed away that I fully understood to what point she had touched people."

-- Sean Hepburn Ferrer

To the world Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) was a graceful birdlike creature who entranced Hollywood with her big doe eyes and impeccable grace and timing. To her son, Sean Ferrer, she was so much more. Audrey Hepburn played many great roles in her life, Hollywood legend being just one. Audrey Hepburn: An Elegant Spirit, by Sean Hepburn Ferrer gives us an intimate peek into his mother, best friend and confidante, Audrey Hepburn.

Watching Audrey Hepburn's breakout role in Paramount Picture's Roman Holiday (1953), it's hard to imagine that she wasn't really a princess. Yet, grace, style and majesty were intrinsic to her being. Audrey Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston, though destined to become one of the most celebrated women in Hollywood, would first encounter a life of struggle.

As a child, a gifted ballerina, she became a child of war, a victim of German occupied Holland. She and her mother knew hunger and devastation but managed to cope in war-torn Europe. When after the war she was told she would not have the classic dance career she'd trained for so diligently, she became a survivor once again. It was time to play a new role. Finding acting work to support herself and her mother became a matter of survival. Luckily, for cinema fans everywhere her struggle brought her to the big screen. After several small parts, Hepburn's groundbreaking role came when she portrayed Princess Ann in Roman Holiday, opposite Gregory Peck, who became a life-long friend. That role changed the course of her life. Hepburn earned the coveted Oscar statuette for Best Actress and won the hearts of legions of fans. She went on to prove herself in outstanding performances, in such films as: Sabrina (1954), Funny Face (1957), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's, (1961) The Children's Hour (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), Wait Until Dark (1967) and Always (1989).

Reelwriter.net was fortunate to speak with Sean Hepburn Ferrer upon the October, 2003 release of his book Audrey Hepburn: An Elegant Spirit, published by Atria Books.

Kelly McCarthy: Many people don't realize that as a young girl prior to World War II your mother was training to become a serious ballerina. Can you talk about that time after the war when she was told, in effect that her prospects of being a prima ballerina were over?

Sean Hepburn Ferrer: All of the ballet training my mother missed during the war years, coupled with the fact that she was taller than male ballet dancers in that era, by the time she went back to London to study under Marie Rambert who had been working with Nijinsky she was told you can be a great second ballerina. You can always teach here. But I don't think you're going to make it as a prima ballerina. That was a big blow to her.

McCarthy: What was her motivation to go into acting?

Ferrer: She and my grandmother had lost everything during the war. My grandmother was doing menial jobs. And so going into modeling and film was really a decision based on, 'I've got to make a living.'

McCarthy: Though her dream of becoming a dancer was put behind her, what affect did the dance training have once she was working on stage and later in film?

Ferrer: It gave her a great respect for hard work and dedication. Ballet training gave her a foundation that enabled her to meet the demands of an acting career head on, doing everything that was needed to quickly become not just a pretty, lovely twig but grow into this beautiful oak tree.

McCarthy: Her graceful body certainly lent itself to her break out role in Roman Holiday. When the part came along, you've said that your mother felt unprepared. What gave her the courage to take the part?

Ferrer: She didn't have a choice. All she would do was say, 'thank you very much' and be as professional and as cordial and as on time and nice to the crew and work hard and know her lines better than anybody. That's what she did throughout her career. Where everybody else would take four or fives takes she'd be fabulous on the first take. She surpassed everyone's standards. She could do it differently, be creative with each take.

McCarthy: Was she harder on herself than anyone else?

Ferrer: I'm sure. I asked her once about Humphrey Bogart. I said, 'What was he like'? And she said, 'He was nice, nothing special. I'd always had this impression that he didn't really think much of me as an actress.' I said, 'That's not fair,' and she said, 'He probably had reasons for that.' She never saw herself as particularly beautiful or special. Actually she saw the defects. Indeed she was the most perfect packaging of defects that anybody could put together. And so again, that's why she felt so fortunate and never really understood why people were so interested in her.

McCarthy: Not all of her experiences were like the one she had with Bogart. Your mother had a wonderful off-screen friendship with Gregory Peck. Was that a relationship they kept up over the years?

Ferrer: Oh yes, she certainly did. She always looked at him not just as a gracious co-star, but as a gracious human being. While working on Roman Holiday he called his agent and said, 'I know I have above the title billing, and she has below title, but trust me I'd look like a fool if I went on with that.' He actually had the contract changed to give them both above the title billing. And she was really an unknown. He knew it was going to be a discovery. It was very gracious.

McCarthy: Do you remember your mother bringing you on film sets as a young child?

Ferrer: I remember dollies and trucks with prop men who would show me all kinds of gadgets and fun things. I didn't even really connect it to her, I mean she was my mother first, and then she was my great friend, and then I realized she was an actress and then I realized she was a pretty good actress. But it really wasn't until she passed away that I fully understood to what a point she had touched people. And I guess the full circle of her career, coupled with, this confirmation that she really was this lovely person that everyone had fallen in love with, really made her universally special. But we weren't a film buff family. She didn't bring it home. She didn't talk about it. She didn't sit there and show us the movies. We didn't have video in those days of course.

McCarthy: In Roman Holiday your mother portrayed a princess. Can you talk about your mother's own royal bloodlines?

Ferrer: That's an exaggeration. She does have some nobility. Her father's side of the family, one of the Hepburn's was in the royal family. But she sort of let all of that go. We all grew up in a real world.

McCarthy: Can you talk about how your mother managed to raise you in the real world?

Ferrer: Once we went to school we couldn't go visit her on the set anymore so she temporarily gave up her career. In those years she dedicated herself to family life. And when we were grown up and went off to start our own lives she realized there was still room to give something back. And that's when she made the decision to work for UNICEF.

McCarthy: How old were you when you began to realize the breadth of her career?

Ferrer: Once I got into the movie business in my early 20's I realized that she was a huge star.

McCarthy: That's amazing. Your mother is Audrey Hepburn and yet for the longest time you didn't realize how big her star really was.

Ferrer: I guess that was her plan for us, not being in a Hollywood state of mind. I've heard millions of stories about kids in this town, growing up with a false sense of their parent's power. I have a friend who is a therapist. She told me she once had counseled kids of studio executives who were in therapy because they could no longer take the private jets to go on holidays in Hawaii. Imagine that. My mother didn't even fly first class, she traveled economy because she was always a believer of being frugal and living a normal life. She comes from a Victorian background, an English upbringing and you don't show off, that's considered low brow.

McCarthy: Her sense of grace and dignity was evident throughout her life, even until the end. How did it come about, after her death (January 20, 1993) that you would write her life story?

Ferrer: She had planned at the end of her life to write something for us, the kids. To tell a family history and leave a document and she was planning on doing it, but she never got around to it. I never really wanted to write, since she never wrote her own biography. But this was basically something that I needed to write for myself. It started as 30-40 pages. It's really using the last two months of her life, in conversations that we had to revisit some of her philosophies, thoughts and spiritual concepts.

McCarthy: How did it come about that you founded the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund to memorialize your mother's work?

Ferrer: After she passed away the first thing we created was the Audrey Hepburn Memorial Fund at UNICEF. That was dedicated to her memory. It was a memorial fund that was dedicated to education in originally four and now five countries that she felt were really the worst off because of their lack of basic infrastructure. She thought the only way to turn that around was with education. Those original countries were Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and we added Rwanda a few years after the 1993 nightmare. And then we created the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund. As she was passing away (during the 1993 Rwanda nightmare) we were able to keep that away from her, not having her look at the news because she would have been devastated by what was going on there.

McCarthy: The entertainment industry also memorialized your mother's passing when the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences honored her with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Oscar. Can you talk about the experience accepting it on her behalf at the 1993 Academy Awards ceremony?

Ferrer: It all happened pretty quickly. She had just passed away and I had to come to Los Angeles. I was reeling from the whole thing and then I had to go out there at the front and there was Jack (Nicholson) and Clint (Eastwood) grinning up. You're told there's 1.2 billion people watching the Academy Awards. I've done public speaking since then but that was one of my first instances. It was only 30 seconds and I thanked the people who completed the circle of love around her when she was ill and the people who were there, friends and family and the staff that had been with her for thirty plus years. That was all that I said, then I hugged Gregory Peck and we went to the green room.

McCarthy: Thank you Sean. The book is a truly wonderful memorial to your mother's many gifts.

Note: For information about The Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund visit: www.audreyhepburn.com.