West German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg, no. 4540. Photo: Centfox. Peter O'Toole in How to Steal a Million (William Wyler, 1966).

Golden-haired, blue-eyed Peter O'Toole (1932-2013) became an international superstar with his unforgettable turn as the British expatriate T.E. Lawrence in David Lean's epic masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962). After surviving cancer and alcoholism, O’Toole made a triumphant come-back with Oscar-nominated appearances in The Stunt Man (1980) and My Favorite Year (1982).

Peter Seamus Lorcan O'Toole was born in 1932. In his autobiography 'Loitering with Intent: the Child' (1992), O’Toole writes that he is not certain of his birthplace, while he has birth certificates from two countries. According to IMDb, he was born in Connemara, Ireland. Other sources indicate Leeds, England, where he also grew up, as his birthplace. However, he was the son of Constance Jane (née Ferguson), a Scottish nurse, and Patrick Joseph O'Toole, an Irish metal plater, football player and racecourse bookmaker. As a boy, Peter decided to become a journalist, beginning as a newspaper copyboy. Although he succeeded in becoming a reporter, he discovered the theatre and made his stage debut at 17. He served as a radioman in the Royal Navy for two years. From 1952 to 1954 he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art as a scholarship student. His classmates included Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Richard Harris. While at RADA he was active in protesting British involvement in the Korean War. Later in the 1960s, he would be an active opponent of the Vietnam War. O'Toole began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company, before making an inconspicuous film debut in the Walt Disney production Kidnapped (Robert Stevenson, 1960), a faithful adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic. Two years later, O'Toole was chosen by director David Lean to play Thomas E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962). The part of the conflicted British liaison officer caught at the centre of an Arab revolt made O'Toole an international superstar. Brian McFarlane observes in the Encyclopedia of British Film: “It was a remarkable study in obsession, catching the right balance between mystic and man of action, bringing to the role kinds of intensity and zeal that few other British actors could have done”. He continued successfully in artistically rich films as well as less artistic but commercially rewarding projects. He was nominated as Best Actor for King Henry II in Becket (Peter Glenville, 1964) starring Richard Burton. Two years later he was nominated again for portraying Henry II, this time in The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey, 1968) alongside Katharine Hepburn.

Peter O‘Toole was one of the greatest actors of his generation. During his career, he received eight Academy Award nominations but never won the Oscar. (He had more nominations without winning than any other actor.) TCM suggests that his flamboyant personal life was maybe to blame: “Known as one of Hollywood's most infamous party animals in his prime, O'Toole earned a reputation as a prodigious drinker alongside his contemporaries and fellow countrymen Richard Harris, Richard Burton, and Oliver Reed. O'Toole's booze-fueled hijinks eventually took their toll, however, on both his career and his health. While the actor did manage to pick up his fifth Oscar nomination for the wickedly funny The Ruling Class (Peter Medak, 1972), the seventies were, generally speaking, a decade-long low-point in the actor's personal life and career.” Once considered one of the most beautiful men ever to grace the silver screen only a decade earlier, O'Toole's alcoholism had cost him his looks. In 1979, his 20-year marriage to Irish actress Sian Phillips ended in divorce, when she left him for a younger man. Medical problems threatened to destroy his life. Originally he thought the problems were the result of his drinking but it turned out to be stomach cancer. He survived by giving up alcohol and by serious medical treatment. He returned to the cinema with two triumphant performances: a sadistic, tyrannical director in the behind-the-scenes comedy The Stunt Man (Richard Rush, 1980), and an ageing swashbuckling film star strongly resembling Errol Flynn in My Favorite Year (Richard Benjamin, 1982). For both films, he received an Oscar nomination. On stage, he received good reviews as John Tanner in Man and Superman and as Henry Higgins in 'Pygmalion' (1984), and he won a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in 'Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell' (1989). However, O'Toole found meaningful film roles increasingly difficult to come by. He appeared in such duds as Supergirl (Jeannot Swarc, 1984), Creator (Ivan Passer, 1985) and Club Paradise (Harold Ramis, 1986), but fortunately, he also appeared in the much-garlanded grand epic The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987). The film about the final Emperor of China (John Lone) won the Oscar for Best Picture.

After another series of lesser films, Peter O'Toole made again a comeback in the new decennium. In 1999 he already won an Emmy Award for his role in the mini-series Joan of Arc (Christian Duguay, 1999). In 2003, he received a Special Oscar for lifetime achievement, an honour O'Toole only reluctantly accepted. He wrote the Academy a letter stating that he was “still in the game” and proved to be so in the following years. In the blockbuster Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) he played the dying King Priam opposite Brad Pitt. In the BBC drama serial Casanova (2005), he appeared as the older version of a legendary 18th-century Italian adventurer. He was once again nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of Maurice in the May-December romantic comedy Venus (Roger Michell, 2006), scripted by Hanif Kureishi. It was his eighth nomination. O'Toole co-starred as the voice of food critic Anton Ego in the Pixar box office hit Ratatouille (Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava, 2007), an animated film about a rat with dreams of becoming the greatest chef in Paris. O'Toole appeared in the second season of Showtime's hit drama series The Tudors (2008), portraying Pope Paul III, who excommunicates King Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) from the church. This act leads to a showdown between the two men in seven of the ten episodes. O'Toole narrated the horror comedy Eldorado (Richard Driscoll, 2011). O'Toole narrated the horror comedy Eldorado (Richard Driscoll, 2011), but in 2012 O'Toole released a statement that he was retiring from acting. Following a long illness, Peter O'Toole died peacefully in a London hospital in 2013. He had two daughters, actresses Patricia O'Toole and Kate O'Toole (1960), from his marriage to Siân Phillips. He also has a son, actor Lorcan O'Toole (1983), by American model Karen Brown. For his body of work, he has won four Golden Globes, a BAFTA, and an Emmy.

Sources: Brian McFarlane (Encyclopaedia of British Film), Nathan Southern (AllMovie), Jim Beaver (IMDb), TCM, Robert Pardi (Filmreference.com), Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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Italian postcard W. Di Giovanni. Image: Italian lobby card by Paramount with a photo by Augusto Di Giovanni. Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953).

Elegant, talented and funny Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) was a Belgian-born, British-Dutch actress and humanitarian. After a start in European cinema, she became one of the most successful Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s.

Audrey Hepburn was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Ixelles/Elsene, a municipality in Brussels, Belgium, in 1929. She was the only child of Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, a Briton, and his second wife, the former Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat, who was a daughter of a former governor of Dutch Guiana. Her father later used the surname of his maternal grandmother, Kathleen Hepburn, to the family's and her surname became Hepburn-Ruston. Hepburn's father's job with a British insurance company meant the family travelled often between Brussels, England, and The Netherlands. In 1935, her parents divorced and her father, a Nazi sympathiser, left the family. n 1939, her mother moved her and her two half-brothers to their grandfather's home in Arnhem in the Netherlands, believing the Netherlands would be safe from a 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 Germans invaded the Netherlands. During the German occupation, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents because an 'English sounding' name was considered dangerous. By 1944, Audrey had become a proficient ballerina. She secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance. During the Dutch famine that followed, over the winter of 1944, 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. Hepburn's wartime experiences later led her to become involved with UNICEF. In 1945, after the war, Hepburn left the Arnhem Conservatory and moved to Amsterdam, where she took ballet lessons with Lithuanian-Dutch-Jewish dancer and choreographer Sonia Gaskell. Hepburn made her first film appearance in Nederlands in 7 lessen/Dutch in Seven Lessons (Charles Huguenot van der Linden, Heinz Josephson, 1948), a Dutch film made for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. It had a film-within-the-film scenario involving a cameraman who's given a week to photograph the aerial highlights of Holland for a travelogue. Hepburn played the stewardess. She then travelled with her mother to London. Gaskell provided an introduction to Marie Rambert, and Hepburn studied ballet at the Ballet Rambert, supporting herself with part-time work as a model. Rambert warned her that she could not become a prima ballerina, because she was relatively tall (1.7m). Audrey decided to pursue an acting career instead.

In London, Audrey Hepburn played in musical theatre in productions such as High Button Shoes and Sauce Piquante. Her theatre work revealed that her voice was not strong and needed to be developed, and during this time she took elocution lessons with the actor Felix Aylmer. Part-time modelling work was not always available and Hepburn registered with the casting officers of Britain's film studios in the hope of getting work as an extra. Hepburn's first British film role was in the farce One Wild Oat (Charles Saunders, 1951) in which she played a hotel receptionist. She played several more small roles in Young Wives' Tale (Henry Cass, 1951), Laughter in Paradise (Mario Zampi, 1951), the classic crime comedy The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951), and the comedy Monte Carlo Baby (Jean Boyer, Lester Fuller, 1951). Monte Carlo Baby was shot at the same time as the French-language version, Nous irons à Monte Carlo (Jean Boyer, 1952). During the filming Hepburn met the famous author Colette, who recommended her for the lead character of a stage version of her novel Gigi on Broadway. Colette reportedly said when she first saw Hepburn: "Voilà! There's our Gigi!" The play opened on 24 November 1951 and ran for 219 performances. Audrey won a Theatre World Award for her performance. Hepburn's first significant film performance was in the British crime drama Secret People (Thorold Dickinson, 1952), starring Valentina Cortese. Audrey played a prodigious ballerina and did all of her own dancing scenes. Her first starring role was opposite Gregory Peck in the Italian-set Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953). Producers initially wanted Elizabeth Taylor for the role of Princess Ann, but director William Wyler was so impressed by Hepburn's screen test (the camera was left on and candid footage of Hepburn relaxing and answering questions, unaware that she was still being filmed, displayed her talents), that he cast her in the lead. For her enchanting role in Roman Holiday, she would win an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. Paramount signed her to a seven-picture contract with twelve months in between films to allow her time for stage work.

After Roman Holiday, Audrey Hepburn filmed Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954) with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. Hepburn was sent to a then-young and upcoming fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy to decide on her wardrobe. Their creative partnership endured for the remainder of Hepburn’s life. Audrey Hepburn wore De Givenchy creations in some of her most renowned films, such as How to steal a Million (William Wyler, 1966) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961). In 1954, she returned to the stage to play the water sprite in Ondine in a performance with Mel Ferrer, who she would marry later in the year. She also won a Tony Award for her performance in Ondine (1954). Hepburn is one of only three actresses to receive a Best Actress Oscar and Best Actress Tony in the same year - the others were Shirley Booth and Ellen Burstyn. Audrey Hepburn was now one of the most successful film actresses in the world, but also a major fashion influence. Her gamine and elfin appearance and widely recognised sense of chic were both admired and imitated. She co-starred with such notable leading men as Henry Fonda in War and Peace (King Vidor, 1956), Fred Astaire in Funny Face (Stanley Donen, 1957), Maurice Chevalier and Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder, 1957), Anthony Perkins in Green Mansions (Mel Ferrer, 1959), and Burt Lancaster in The Unforgiven (John Huston, 1960). According to Denny Jackson at IMDb, "Audrey reached the pinnacle of her career when she played Holly Golightly in the delightful film Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). For this, she received another Oscar nomination." Opposite Shirley MacLaine, she starred in The Children's Hour (William Wyler, 1961). She scored another box office hit with the espionage caper Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963) with Cary Grant. One of her most radiant roles was as Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964), opposite Rex Harrison. She became only the third actor to receive $1,000,000 for a film role. She followed it with roles opposite Peter O'Toole in How to Steal a Million (William Wyler, 1966) and Albert Finney in Two for the Road (Stanley Donen, 1967). She received Academy Award nominations for Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (Fred Zinnemann, 1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967), and won BAFTA Awards for her performances in The Nun's Story (1959) and Charade (1963). After Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967) and 15 years of continuous success, she took a break from film-making from 1968 to 1975, mostly to spend more time with her two sons.

In 1976 Audrey Hepburn returned to the screen with Sean Connery in the period piece Robin and Marian (Richard Lester, 1976), which was moderately successful. Three years later she took the leading role in the international production Bloodline (Terence Young, 1979) based on a novel by Sidney Sheldon. The film, an international intrigue amid the jet set, was a critical and box office failure. Another commercial failure was the mad cap private-eye caper They All Laughed (Peter Bogdanovich, 1981). In 1989 she made her last film appearance as an angel in the romantic comedy Always (Steven Spielberg, 1989) starring Richard Dreyfuss. Her wartime experiences inspired her passion for humanitarian work, and although she had worked for United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) since the 1950s, during her later life, she dedicated much of her time and energy to the organisation. From 1988 until 1992, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia. In 1992, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. After her divorce from American actor Mel Ferrer, Hepburn married Italian psychiatrist Dr. Andrea Dotti. She had a son with each – Sean (1960) by Ferrer, and Luca (1970) by Dotti. From 1980 until her death, she lived with the Dutch actor Robert Wolders. In 1993, Audrey Hepburn died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Tolochenaz, Switzerland at the age of 63. She was posthumously awarded The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for her humanitarian work. She received a posthumous Grammy Award for her spoken word recording, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales in 1994, and in the same year, won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement for Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, thereby becoming one of a few people to receive an Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony award. In 1999, she was ranked as the third greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.

Sources: Denny Jackson and Volker Boehm (IMDb), Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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Italian postcard. Photo: Paramount. Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953).

Elegant, talented and funny Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) was a Belgian-born, British-Dutch actress and humanitarian. After a start in European cinema, she became one of the most successful Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s.

American actor Gregory Peck (1916-2003) was one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s. Peck received five nominations for Academy Award for Best Actor and won once – for his performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). He almost always played courageous, nobly heroic good guys who saw injustice and fought it. Among his best known films are Spellbound (1945), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Roman Holiday (1953), The Guns of Navarone (1961), and Cape Fear (1962).

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Tags:   Audrey Hepburn Audrey Hepburn British Actress European Film Star Hollywood Movie Star Gregory Peck Gregory Peck American Actor Acteur Attore Schauspieler Darsteller Film Picture Screen Movie Movies Cinema Cine Kino Filmster Star Handsome Vintage Postcard Postkarte Carte Postale Cartolina Tarjet Postal Tarjet Postal Postkaart Briefkaart Briefkarte Ansichtskarte Ansichtkaart Roman Holiday 1953

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Postcard. Poster for the film Roman Holiday (William Wyler, Paramount 1953).

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Dutch postcard by Takken / 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. 1469. Photo: Paramount. Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953).

Elegant, talented and funny Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) was a Belgian-born, British-Dutch actress and humanitarian. After a start in European cinema, she became one of the most successful Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s.

Audrey Hepburn was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Ixelles/Elsene, a municipality in Brussels, Belgium, in 1929. She was the only child of Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, a Briton, and his second wife, the former Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat, who was a daughter of a former governor of Dutch Guiana. Her father later used the surname of his maternal grandmother, Kathleen Hepburn, to the family's and her surname became Hepburn-Ruston. Hepburn's father's job with a British insurance company meant the family travelled often between Brussels, England, and The Netherlands. In 1935, her parents divorced and her father, a Nazi sympathiser, left the family. n 1939, her mother moved her and her two half-brothers to their grandfather's home in Arnhem in the Netherlands, believing the Netherlands would be safe from a 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 Germans invaded the Netherlands. During the German occupation, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents because an 'English sounding' name was considered dangerous. By 1944, Audrey had become a proficient ballerina. She secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance. During the Dutch famine that followed, over the winter of 1944, 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. Hepburn's wartime experiences later led her to become involved with UNICEF. In 1945, after the war, Hepburn left the Arnhem Conservatory and moved to Amsterdam, where she took ballet lessons with Lithuanian-Dutch-Jewish dancer and choreographer Sonia Gaskell. Hepburn made her first film appearance in Nederlands in 7 lessen/Dutch in Seven Lessons (Charles Huguenot van der Linden, Heinz Josephson, 1948), a Dutch film made for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. It had a film-within-the-film scenario involving a cameraman who's given a week to photograph the aerial highlights of Holland for a travelogue. Hepburn played the stewardess. She then travelled with her mother to London. Gaskell provided an introduction to Marie Rambert, and Hepburn studied ballet at the Ballet Rambert, supporting herself with part-time work as a model. Rambert warned her that she could not become a prima ballerina, because she was relatively tall (1.7m). Audrey decided to pursue an acting career instead.

In London, Audrey Hepburn played in musical theatre in productions such as High Button Shoes and Sauce Piquante. Her theatre work revealed that her voice was not strong and needed to be developed, and during this time she took elocution lessons with the actor Felix Aylmer. Part-time modelling work was not always available and Hepburn registered with the casting officers of Britain's film studios in the hope of getting work as an extra. Hepburn's first British film role was in the farce One Wild Oat (Charles Saunders, 1951) in which she played a hotel receptionist. She played several more small roles in Young Wives' Tale (Henry Cass, 1951), Laughter in Paradise (Mario Zampi, 1951), the classic crime comedy The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951), and the comedy Monte Carlo Baby (Jean Boyer, Lester Fuller, 1951). Monte Carlo Baby was shot at the same time as the French-language version, Nous irons à Monte Carlo (Jean Boyer, 1952). During the filming Hepburn met the famous author Colette, who recommended her for the lead character of a stage version of her novel Gigi on Broadway. Colette reportedly said when she first saw Hepburn: "Voilà! There's our Gigi!" The play opened on 24 November 1951 and ran for 219 performances. Audrey won a Theatre World Award for her performance. Hepburn's first significant film performance was in the British crime drama Secret People (Thorold Dickinson, 1952), starring Valentina Cortese. Audrey played a prodigious ballerina and did all of her own dancing scenes. Her first starring role was opposite Gregory Peck in the Italian-set Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953). Producers initially wanted Elizabeth Taylor for the role of Princess Ann, but director William Wyler was so impressed by Hepburn's screen test (the camera was left on and candid footage of Hepburn relaxing and answering questions, unaware that she was still being filmed, displayed her talents), that he cast her in the lead. For her enchanting role in Roman Holiday, she would win an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. Paramount signed her to a seven-picture contract with twelve months in between films to allow her time for stage work.

After Roman Holiday, Audrey Hepburn filmed Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954) with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. Hepburn was sent to a then-young and upcoming fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy to decide on her wardrobe. Their creative partnership endured for the remainder of Hepburn’s life. Audrey Hepburn wore De Givenchy creations in some of her most renowned films, such as How to steal a Million (William Wyler, 1966) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961). In 1954, she returned to the stage to play the water sprite in Ondine in a performance with Mel Ferrer, who she would marry later in the year. She also won a Tony Award for her performance in Ondine (1954). Hepburn is one of only three actresses to receive a Best Actress Oscar and Best Actress Tony in the same year - the others were Shirley Booth and Ellen Burstyn. Audrey Hepburn was now one of the most successful film actresses in the world, but also a major fashion influence. Her gamine and elfin appearance and widely recognised sense of chic were both admired and imitated. She co-starred with such notable leading men as Henry Fonda in War and Peace (King Vidor, 1956), Fred Astaire in Funny Face (Stanley Donen, 1957), Maurice Chevalier and Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder, 1957), Anthony Perkins in Green Mansions (Mel Ferrer, 1959), and Burt Lancaster in The Unforgiven (John Huston, 1960). According to Denny Jackson at IMDb, "Audrey reached the pinnacle of her career when she played Holly Golightly in the delightful film Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). For this, she received another Oscar nomination." Opposite Shirley MacLaine, she starred in The Children's Hour (William Wyler, 1961). She scored another box office hit with the espionage caper Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963) with Cary Grant. One of her most radiant roles was as Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964), opposite Rex Harrison. She became only the third actor to receive $1,000,000 for a film role. She followed it with roles opposite Peter O'Toole in How to Steal a Million (William Wyler, 1966) and Albert Finney in Two for the Road (Stanley Donen, 1967). She received Academy Award nominations for Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (Fred Zinnemann, 1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967), and won BAFTA Awards for her performances in The Nun's Story (1959) and Charade (1963). After Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967) and 15 years of continuous success, she took a break from film-making from 1968 to 1975, mostly to spend more time with her two sons.

In 1976 Audrey Hepburn returned to the screen with Sean Connery in the period piece Robin and Marian (Richard Lester, 1976), which was moderately successful. Three years later she took the leading role in the international production Bloodline (Terence Young, 1979) based on a novel by Sidney Sheldon. The film, an international intrigue amid the jet set, was a critical and box office failure. Another commercial failure was the mad cap private-eye caper They All Laughed (Peter Bogdanovich, 1981). In 1989 she made her last film appearance as an angel in the romantic comedy Always (Steven Spielberg, 1989) starring Richard Dreyfuss. Her wartime experiences inspired her passion for humanitarian work, and although she had worked for United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) since the 1950s, during her later life, she dedicated much of her time and energy to the organisation. From 1988 until 1992, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia. In 1992, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. After her divorce from American actor Mel Ferrer, Hepburn married Italian psychiatrist Dr. Andrea Dotti. She had a son with each – Sean (1960) by Ferrer, and Luca (1970) by Dotti. From 1980 until her death, she lived with the Dutch actor Robert Wolders. In 1993, Audrey Hepburn died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Tolochenaz, Switzerland at the age of 63. She was posthumously awarded The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for her humanitarian work. She received a posthumous Grammy Award for her spoken word recording, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales in 1994, and in the same year, won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement for Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, thereby becoming one of a few people to receive an Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony award. In 1999, she was ranked as the third greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.

Sources: Denny Jackson and Volker Boehm (IMDb), Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Tags:   Audrey Hepburn Audrey Hepburn British Actress European Film Star Hollywood Movie Star Film Cinema Cine Kino Picture Screen Movie Movies Filmster Star Glamour Allure Vedette Vintage Postcard Carte Postale Cartolina Tarjet Postal Postkarte Postkaart Briefkarte Briefkaart Ansichtskarte Ansichtkaart Idol Celebrity Paramount Roman Holiday Princess Royalty 1953 Bed Takken ''t Sticht

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