Tribute To Actress Audrey Kathleen Ruston aka Audrey Hepburn I

Tribute To Actress Audrey Kathleen Ruston aka Audrey Hepburn (* 4 May 1929 as Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Ixelles/Elsene, Belgium; † 20 January 1993 in Tolochenaz, Switzerland) was an actress of British-Dutch descent. She was one of the biggest female film stars of the 1950s and 1960s. She was born in Belgium in 1929, the daughter of Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889-1980), a Briton, and his Dutch wife Ella Baroness van Heemstra (1900-1984), and was granted British citizenship by descent. She had two half-brothers, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander Quarles van Ufford (1920-1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (1924-2010), from her mother's first marriage to Dutch nobleman Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford.

From 1935 to 1938 she attended a girls' school in the English county of Kent. When the Second World War broke out, the family moved in with her grandfather in Arnhem in the Netherlands, where she witnessed the German occupation from May 1940. During this time, she took ballet lessons at the Arnhem Conservatory. During the Allied advance in the winter of 1944/1945, she experienced the Hongerwinter. After the war, the family moved temporarily to Amsterdam. There she stood in front of a film camera for the first time in 1948 for the advertising film Nederlands in 7 Lessen by the documentary filmmaker Charles Huguenot van der Linden. Soon after, she went back to England where she trained with Marie Rambert to become a ballerina. To earn money, she first worked as a model and appeared in a few musicals in London's West End, followed by smaller roles in British films such as One Wild Oat and Happiness Came Overnight (both 1951). Roger Moore also appeared in One Wild Oat, but she did not have a scene with him. Stars such as Elizabeth Taylor and Jean Simmons were considered for the leading role in the romantic comedy A Heart and a Crown (1953).

Instead, the completely unknown Tribute To Actress Audrey Kathleen Ruston aka Audrey Hepburn was given the role of Princess Ann, who falls in love with a reporter (Gregory Peck) in Rome. A Heart and a Crown developed into a box office hit and made the 24-year-old a star overnight. For her first leading role, she also received the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role on 26 March 1954. Tribute To Actress Audrey Kathleen Ruston aka Audrey Hepburn, who had become a star with only one film, was one of the leading film actresses until the late 1960s. Almost every one of her films became a commercial success, many are considered classics of film history. Her last role was that of an angel in the film Always (1989) by Steven Spielberg.