Audrey Hepburn was born on May 4, 1929 in Brussels, Belgium. Her parents were Dutch baroness Ella van Heemstra and John Hepburn Ruston. Her father was a very successful, and wealthy English banker.
During the horrible days of World War II, Audrey ate tulip bulbs to survive, and witnessed the horrors firsthand. She even turned down the lead role in George Stevens’ Diary of Anne Frank because, as a young girl in Holland during the war, she witnessed Nazi soldiers publicly executing people and herding Jews onto railroad cars to be sent to death camps. Audrey identified all too well with Anne’s story and said that to take the role would have caused too many painful memories.
During the war, 16-year-old Audrey was a volunteer nurse in a Dutch hospital. Her hospital received many wounded Allied soldiers. One of the injured soldiers that she helped was a young British paratrooper, Terence Young. Ironically, more than 20 years later, in 1967, Young directed Hepburn in the thriller, Wait Until Dark.
