By Donald Spoto
Her identify is synonymous with beauty, variety and charm. Over the process her awesome lifestyles and occupation, Audrey Hepburn captured hearts world wide and created a public snapshot that stands as the most recognizable and cherished in fresh reminiscence. yet regardless of her foreign reputation and her tireless efforts on behalf of UNICEF, Audrey was once additionally recognized for her excessive privateness. With exceptional entry to studio information, associates and associates who knew and enjoyed Audrey, bestselling writer Donald Spoto presents an intimate and relocating account of this gorgeous, elusive and proficient woman.
Tracing her mind-blowing upward push to stardom, from her harrowing youth in Nazi-controlled Holland in the course of global struggle II to her years as a suffering ballet dancer in London and her Tony Award—winning Broadway debut in Gigi, Spoto illuminates the origins of Audrey's tenacious spirit and fiercely passionate nature.
She could pass directly to big name in probably the most well known video clips of the 20th century, together with Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Funny Face, The Nun's Story, Breakfast at Tiffany's and My reasonable Lady. a pal and suggestion to popular dressmaker Hubert de Givenchy, Audrey emerged as a manner icon in addition to a movie legend, her effect on women's type almost extraordinary to this day.
But at the back of the glamorous public personality, Audrey Hepburn was once either a special and a deeper individual and a lady who craved love and affection. Donald Spoto deals striking insights into her specialist and private relationships along with her husbands, and with celebrities similar to Gregory Peck, William Holden, Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Robert Anderson, Cary supply, Peter O'Toole, Albert Finney and Ben Gazzara. The turbulent romances of her formative years, her profound sympathy for the plight of hungry kids, and the thrills and terrors of motherhood ready Audrey for the ultimate bankruptcy in her lifestyles, as she dedicated herself fullyyt to the charity efforts of a firm that had as soon as come to her rescue on the finish of the battle: UNICEF.
Donald Spoto has written a poignant, humorous and deeply relocating biography of an unforgettable lady. ultimately, Enchantment finds the non-public Audrey Hepburn—and invitations readers to fall in love together with her over again.
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Additional resources for Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn
Example text
When I was little, I embarrassed my mother by trying to pick babies out of prams on the streets and at markets. The one thing I dreamed of in my life was to have children of my own. ” As for 1 4 < Donald Spoto “receiving love,” even the semblance of it under the guise of basic domestic security: that was forever shattered when, at the end of May 1935—with no prior threats or warnings—Joseph Ruston packed his clothes and, apparently without a word to anyone, walked out the door into rue Keyenveld, never to return.
I was] terrified. What was going to happen to me? ” The abandonment of 1935, she added, “has stayed with me through my own relation- ENCHANTMENT = 15 ships. ” That day made Audrey withdraw from the few friends her mother allowed—a withdrawal that must have been partly from shame; partly from a mixture of sorrow and confusion for which she had no words; and partly from the cloud of guilt that darkens the soul of every child when a parent walks out. Did she do something to cause it? Was she in some way unlovable?
But as E. N. van Kleffens, then the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, wrote in 1940, “The Dutch have a gift of shrewd perspicacity which no propaganda can obliterate, [and] outward resignation should not be taken for inward submission” to the Nazis. 2 4 < Donald Spoto Precisely this spirit was evident in the remarkable story of the spirited and heroic members of the Dutch resistance to the German invasion. The resistance was first concerned with maintaining calm until the end of the war. Later, when it was clear that the restoration of peace was not a proximate reality, the Council of Resistance in the Kingdom of the Netherlands was founded, and its members were armed.
