Darcey Bussell's Looking for Audrey

Won't you join me?

'Yes, join Audrey Hepburn as you've never seen her before.'

We all think we know Audrey Hepburn...

WHISTLES

..the ultimate style icon,

the star of Breakfast At Tiffany's.

An Oscar winner at just 24.

Audrey Hepburn, the girl who never planned to be an actress,

found herself here, the new star of Hollywood.

Beneath the success and glamour,

there is so much more to Audrey's story.

I'm Darcey Bussell and this is my journey

to find out about the Audrey who has always inspired and intrigued me.

You can see her soul through her eyes.

And she was gentle.

And calm.

And deep.

As a child, Audrey survived a brutal war.

I've learned she danced her way to fame,

escaping the sadness of her past.

It harks back to her father leaving the household,

which was one of the biggest shocks of her life.

From the first time I saw her, Audrey's beauty,

charm and grace captured my heart.

As it clearly did for so many.

And yet, I think Audrey was always searching for love.

Her life story is, in a way, like a fairy tale,

because real fairy tales are not all about good stuff.

There's terrible things that happen on the way there.

It's this other side to Audrey,

the darkness she encountered at times in her life,

that I believe is the essence of her story.

Join me in finding the unknown Audrey Hepburn.

Here in the Alps, high above Lake Lucerne,

is where Audrey liked to retreat from Hollywood.

One of the most surprising things about her is

she spent most of her adult life in Switzerland.

To understand Audrey, this is the first place I've come to.

I always felt there was much more to Audrey.

Maybe not just the Hollywood star.

But happier in Europe, away from the glitz and glamour.

It's here that I'm meeting Audrey's eldest son, Sean.

He has given me a private album of his mother's photos and documents.

They span her whole life, showing me her everyday world.

A tantalising glimpse of the Audrey we don't know.

The real person behind the icon.

She said, "When I started, I didn't know acting, I didn't know this.

"And I never thought of myself throughout life

"as very beautiful or special."

And yet, Audrey was special.

She burst onto the screen with a star part in a Hollywood movie,

entirely filmed in one of the most glamorous cities in the world.

Paramount Pictures sent Audrey to Rome in the summer of 1952

for her first leading role,

opposite the legendary Hollywood screen actor Gregory Peck.

It was a dream come true.

It's unbelievably impressive, isn't it,

to think that Audrey was driving around here...

..in a little moped.

HORN BEEPS

I think I needed to get my indicator off!

I've already met Sean.

And now I'm meeting Audrey's other son, Luca,

who lives in Rome.

His mother told him what it was like to be an overnight sensation.

How she stayed here, when filming,

at the Hassler, Rome's most expensive hotel

in the heart of the city.

She took to the high life as if born to it.

And what a high life it was!

Wow!

So beautiful!

I can't believe that is 360 degrees, isn't it?

And this is the one thing about Rome, the view,

the view from the roofs.

And this was exactly the same view my mother had

when she was staying here at the Hassler.

So just one floor below? Oh, my...!

Just one floor below.

The one thing my mother enjoyed,

was most surprised at,

everybody's little garden on the roof.

She must have been just flabbergasted coming from...

And I think everybody is, you know, when you come to Rome.

Anybody that would come here.

Beautiful.

You feel so privileged. So privileged.

Oh...!

Roman Holiday is one of my favourite films.

It tells the story of a titled girl,

who cuts loose from her old life to run wild in Rome.

'She's a princess. She's beautiful.

'And, confidentially, she's a pixie.

'One night, she's the guest of honour

'at a glittering state reception.

'And the very next night...

You have my permission to withdraw.

Thank you very much.

'How did this cute little surprise package wind up in Greg's apartment?

'That's what he's wondering, too.

'And wait till you see the princess let her hair down!'

I think she was so different

from what any other actress was doing at that time

or what any other film they were producing at that time.

Audrey was perfectly cast as a princess in Roman Holiday.

Her own background was aristocratic

and then the family fell on hard times.

She, too, was breaking free.

She always told me that it was like a fairy tale, you know?

She was struck by the luck of being here, you know?

It was like...

And it went very well with the story of the movie.

So it was like two fairy tales in one.

It was her first appearance as a star

and Audrey's charisma was immediate.

She became one of the most photographed women in Rome.

I'm on my way to Harry's Bar to meet paparazzi photographer

Reno "The King" Barillari.

When Roman Holiday was shooting,

he waited 15 hours every day to photograph Audrey Hepburn.

SPEAKS IN ITALIAN

-INTERPRETER:

-Now I'll let you see something lovely.

Look at this photo.

This photo, not that I did it, but look how amazing it is.

It was in the Piazza Espana and I was with Audrey Hepburn.

What was it like photographing Audrey Hepburn?

REPLIES IN ITALIAN

-INTERPRETER:

-For me, Audrey Hepburn was really important

from a journalistic and photographic point of view

because she became sought after all over the world.

In America.

In Spain.

In Switzerland.

In England.

You could always sell a photo of her,

even when she was out and about shopping.

Those photographs always sold.

SPEAKS IN ITALIAN

-INTERPRETER:

-Wherever she went, people stopped and stared.

Even the girls that worked in the shops

would come out and look at her.

When she was walking around,

there was this gorgeous perfume trailing after her.

She would always greet us. She was very approachable.

And in the photographs, she became something even more.

She was beautiful.

She was fantastic.

She looked like a Madonna.

And yet, behind the dazzling public triumph

was an astonishing tale of abandonment,

courage and heartache.

The journey to stardom began with trauma.

Audrey's blissful childhood was marred by betrayal and tragedy,

which would shape the rest of her life.

Audrey was born in Belgium in 1929, to Ella,

from a well-to-do Flemish family,

and Joseph, an Anglo-Irishman.

She liked to spend time with her father.

He was joyous. Maybe not a warm father, but a joking father.

He had his horses

and spoke 13 languages,

would take her gliding.

He was a wonderful gliding pilot.

And then everything changed.

When she was six, Audrey's father walked out.

He left like in those terrible stories

where he goes out for cigarettes and he never came home. Almost.

It was the major first blow in her emotional life.

It played a vital role

in making her probably more insecure

than she needed to be.

From then on, Audrey's childhood was unsettled.

She was packed off to school in a small village in Kent.

Her mother decides it might be a good idea for her to learn English,

so they sent her to boarding school.

Although a British passport holder through her father,

it was difficult for Audrey to fit in.

And she feels like an outsider, but she learns English.

And very soon the war is declared.

And...the mother leaves for Holland,

which is a neutral country.

On the outbreak of war, Audrey's mother, Ella,

sent for Audrey to join her and the extended family

here in the Dutch market town of Arnhem.

They were taken in in this house by Audrey's wealthy grandfather.

Wow! Beautiful room!

So grand!

Oh, she would've loved this space.

And, apparently, all the furniture here, what I've been told,

is all original.

So, she would've had all this furniture

while she was here as a child.

And there's a piano.

So I can imagine her dancing as a child in this room to music.

No wonder she must've come here and just thought,

Oh, I'm going to be fine here, I'm going to love this space.

Lovely sliding door.

And you walk into what looks like a very Dutch room.

A gentleman's room here. It's like a study.

Maybe even her grandfather sat here, doing his paperwork.

There's the most beautiful views out.

No wonder, when she arrived, thinking,

"Oh, this is the place. I'm going to feel so safe."

It might have seemed the right thing.

But Ella made the wrong choice bringing Audrey here.

Audrey was uprooted, she didn't speak the language

and the long shadow of war would soon reach her and her family.

Within a year, the Nazis turned against the Dutch.

In May 1940, they crossed the border and marched into Holland.

I came across this in Audrey's own words.

"All civilians were ordered to remain indoors

"and to close their shutters.

"Naturally, we peeped.

"We saw the grey uniforms of German soldiers on foot.

"They all held machine guns.

"The next thing we knew, they had taken control of the town."

And she talked about the fact that, from one day to the next,

literally, everything you took for granted was gone.

Your freedom to cross the street. I mean, your most...

The things you would never think about.

"OK, it's eight o'clock. Let's go to dinner."

Gone.

"Would you run out and get some milk?"

Gone.

And then there's no heating.

And there's no school.

And then there's no food.

Arnhem would not be liberated for five years.

Audrey and her family were trapped in a brutal Nazi regime.

The Hartenstein Museum here in Arnhem

records some of what happened.

200,000 Dutch civilians,

including three-quarters of the Jewish population,

would perish or disappear.

It must have been terrifying for Audrey and her family.

Where they thought they were going to be safe,

everything around them fell apart.

The insecurities,

the shortages of food...

It must have been pretty scary.

No Dutch family would escape German occupation.

Audrey's two half-brothers were much older than she was.

Before the war, they played charades together.

Now one was in a German labour camp,

the other in the Dutch resistance.

They would survive the war.

Audrey's uncle would not.

Historian Ismee Tames is a specialist in wartime Holland.

We know that Audrey's uncle, Otto, was rounded up and actually shot.

Do you know anything about that?

People were rounded up

and either taken as hostages or they were killed.

They were just, like, executed.

And I think that's what happened to Audrey's uncle,

that he was picked up as a...as a kind of revenge act

for a deed by the resistance.

Reprisals against innocent civilians

were followed during the last winter of the war

by the worst period of all.

So that last year, that last winter,

why was it called "the hunger winter"?

To many people in the Netherlands,

during the last months of the occupation,

it felt like they were under siege.

There was no food.

There was no fuel.

And they didn't know when to be liberated.

I mean, especially for Audrey,

knowing as a young child what it would have been like

going to bed totally hungry

and had no food that day...

When you look at Audrey's family

who, of course, well, had a kind of status in the Netherlands,

they were used to, you know, a kind of luxury.

And they were definitely not used to shortages of food.

It was not just the agonising feeling of the hunger

but, also, this feeling of being so vulnerable as a child.

Audrey and her mother lived on potatoes and gruel.

Sometimes not even that.

Is it true that

they had to actually grind down

the tulip bulbs

into a flour to eat?

That's what actually happened,

that people were making a meal out of tulip bulbs.

Audrey's health would never fully recover

from her wartime malnutrition.

And yet, her spirit shone through.

We're talking about resilience.

We're talking about the ability to go onto the next thing, regardless.

That's resiliency.

That's wit and survival to live.

We may think of Audrey as an iconic actress.

But she made her performance debut by dancing in wartime Holland.

As I found out from this interview she gave

for her Roman Holiday screen test.

I didn't know how long the war was going to last,

so I went to the ballet school and learned to dance.

And in about 1944,

about a year before the end of the war,

I was quite capable of performing.

And it was a sort of, some way in which I could...

..make some contribution and...

I did give performances to collect money for the underground,

which always needed money.

And what about the Germans, what did they do about it?

They didn't know about it!

You can see, actually,

how serious it was to her what happened during the war.

And... But, then, how kind of naughty she is, as well.

Because it says,

"Well, we were never going to let the Germans find out!"

I just love that.

And that grin that just suddenly lights up for the camera.

Now I've come to Arnhem's Municipal Theatre

to be on the same stage where Audrey danced in defiance of the Nazis.

I have a programme,

which actually was a performance that Audrey did here in the theatre.

There we are now.

And she has quite a couple of solos,

which is all part of the performance

that she did to raise money for the resistance.

That was her first true connection

to what it means to perform

and to be good.

And in that case, we're talking about survival.

We're talking about helping people to get through

a pretty dark moment.

After the war ended, Audrey carried on her ballet training.

She dreamt of taking her dancing further.

But her family lost everything in the war

and there was no money left.

So Audrey planned a leap into the unknown.

She applied for a scholarship to come to London.

In 1948, Audrey left the ruins of post-war Europe

to take up a place at the Rambert Ballet School in Notting Hill.

I have here a letter of Audrey's passport out.

It says here,

"To whom it may concern,

"Miss Audrey Hepburn is known to me as a British subject.

"She has been for some time a student of ballet dancing

"and is proceeding to the United Kingdom

"to study at the Rambert School Of Ballet Dancing."

And it's amazing because, actually, it's dated the 10th April 1948.

Which means that she was 19 at this time.

And Audrey's mother came along as well.

Once she, too, hoped to go on stage,

but her parents objected.

Now her energies were poured into Audrey.

And in a way, we have to accept

that she was the great mastermind

behind the original invention of Audrey Hepburn.

And yet, Ella's masterminding of Audrey

would always be tinged with envy.

They kept this daily pressure on each other.

There definitely was a bond there.

Close is not the way to describe it.

They were tied to each other.

Ronald Hynd knew Audrey at ballet school.

They took classes here, once the Rambert rehearsal rooms,

now a private house.

-It's looking very different.

-Yes.

-But all I can recognise are the three arched...

-Yes.

They were doors leading to the boys' dressing room

and the girls' dressing room.

-She appeared out of the end archway...

-The girls' dressing room.

..and, suddenly, this beautiful girl with the long neck,

beautiful shoulders, sleek hair,

adorable face...

-Yes.

-Tallish.

And do you remember her in rehearsal?

She'd just arrived from Holland.

Well, she was an outsider. She was foreign.

You know, for then, at that time, just after the war,

that was strange.

And then we saw her

and occasionally I would have my hands round her waist...

-OK...

-Partnering her like this.

-In the pas de deux classes.

In the pas de deux class, yes.

-Little lift with her.

-Oh...

I bet she was rather easy to lift.

Going through the war and probably not having the nutrition...

-Oh, exactly.

-..and knowing she really suffered through the war...

-Yes. Yes.

-..and through malnutrition and...

Oh, yes. I mean...

-Somehow, dancing makes you strong.

-Yes.

However weak you are, dancing toughens you up

and gives you something.

After six months and whilst still taking class with the Rambert,

Audrey was dancing professionally.

But not as a ballerina.

Her first job was as a chorus girl

in a musical called High Button Shoes,

earning £9 a week.

Audrey went on to two more hit shows,

Sauce Piquante

and Sauce Tartare.

London's National Portrait Gallery is putting together

an exhibition of Audrey's photos from that time.

I've come to meet the curator, Terence Pepper,

to find out if Audrey stood out even then.

And these are her, what, first pictures as a chorus girl.

She's dancing with her partner, Marcel Le Bon here.

-Her first boyfriend.

-Yeah, her first boyfriend.

Her first serious boyfriend, yes.

Who she was going to go on tour with and so on,

but something went wrong and they split up.

A lot of people sort of referred to her as "the girl with the eyes".

She had this sort of magnetic look.

Her personality came through.

I think it's because her eyes, the whites of the eyes,

just stand out straightaway.

She obviously knew how to use her eyes.

Yes, she really sort of fixed her eye on to you.

Because they're beautiful girls as well, but they just don't stand out.

You immediately go to her, don't you? Yeah.

I think this is lovely because she is quite cheeky,

-you know, like a little pixie in this.

-Exactly, yes.

But this is Sauce Piquante.

She is representing champagne, according to the caption.

Bubbly and bright.

Terence, I've got something to show you.

Thanks for showing me such an amazing collection.

-Wow, what have you got?

-I have here a letter.

"Dear Miss Hepburn, I saw you in Sauce Piquante last night

"and I think you were marvellous.

"I wish I were a rich man instead of a butcher's assistant.

"But I feel you will pardon liberty if I ask you

"could you please send a photograph that I may keep?"

Oh, that's wonderful to have a fan letter

-that's survived all those years.

-I know. I know.

And, obviously, that she kept, that she was very proud of.

Gosh. Wow.

There was admiration from her peers as well.

British actress, Vanessa Redgrave,

also studied at The Ballet Rambert

before going to drama school in the '50s.

Vanessa, I heard that you wanted to be a dancer

and you actually trained with Audrey Hepburn.

-Well, Audrey was older than me.

-Yes.

And a vivid memory.

Absolutely merry face.

Looking at her from my own point of view...

Wow!

What a lovely-looking, vivacious, friendly face.

And then other girls around were saying,

"You know who that was?"

And I was listening, "Who's that? Who's that?

"I didn't know who that was. No. Who is it?"

And then somebody said,

"Audrey Hepburn. She just got a part in a film."

Audrey was scouted by the British film industry

while dancing on stage in Ciro's Nightclub.

Film and fashion historian Pamela Church Gibson

has studied Audrey's early film career.

So, Pamela, what were the first British films that Audrey played in?

Well, she had small parts in a lot of forgettable films,

but she had a bit part in the Lavender Hill Mob,

which was an Ealing Comedy.

Ealing Comedies were really popular in Britain in the early '50s.

And when she appears, she looks like Audrey Hepburn in this tiny clip.

Oh, Chiquita, Chiquita.

You little princess, you.

You run along and get yourself another birthday present.

Oh, but how sweet!

Thank you.

It's extraordinary.

She's, what, only 22 in her first appearance in a British film.

I can't actually...

She's already got the style of Audrey Hepburn

from the very, very beginning

of her career in films.

Just a few tiny British film roles were a springboard

to Audrey's international stardom.

In 1951, a famous French writer was seeking a leading lady

for a stage version of her best-loved novel,

when she spotted Audrey Hepburn.

She was making a film in Monte Carlo.

And Colette, the novelist, who, of course, wrote Gigi,

was being pushed across the hotel lobby.

She was very old by this time.

And she saw this very pretty young girl,

you know, who was off duty,

sort of kidding about with, you know,

a group of people near a piano.

And she saw instantly that this was the embodiment of Gigi

and she famously said, "I've found my Gigi!"

Colette recognised Audrey was the perfect person to play Gigi,

a young, carefree courtesan.

Audrey was to take America by storm.

Gigi opened to packed houses on Broadway.

By the time the play finished,

Audrey was under contract to Paramount Pictures.

She made it seem easy.

You know, it was a dream.

At the same time, she was terrified.

She always said to us, you know,

"People are going to wake up one day and I'll be fired."

So she would wake up at four-thirty, five o'clock in the morning

to read her parts, to be spot on.

Audrey's unique image was recognised very early in her film career

while she was making Roman Holiday.

She came here to Cinecitta,

the studio complex outside Rome.

This is where make-up artist Nilo Jacopini was based.

I've asked him to show me how the Audrey Hepburn look was born.

Do you remember, Nilo, what colour Audrey Hepburn's eyes were?

SPEAKS IN ITALIAN

-INTERPRETER:

-The colour was just like yours.

The iris was the identical colour.

They were grey and dark brown.

I call mine khaki.

Shitty-colour eyes!

Do you think they really changed her look or she had her own style from the very beginning?

-TRANSLATION:

-Well, in fact,

there was a special way of doing make-up just for her.

She had such an individual look.

They were then able to create a unique way of making her up

to suit her.

Do you believe that Audrey's dark eyebrows,

her dark eyes, was a very contemporary look she had for her time in the 1950s?

TRANSLATION:

It was a very innovative look.

It was the first time make-up was done in this way.

It was a completely new way of making up the face to suit

her facial structure and characteristics.

I can't believe I have doe eyes like Audrey Hepburn now.

The signature Audrey look crafted in Europe was a complete

departure from American movies of the time.

After Roman Holiday, a string of successful films followed -

alongside Hollywood's greatest leading men.

Sabrina with Humphrey Bogart, Funny Face with Fred Astaire

and My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison.

In each, Audrey played a young girl transformed by good

fortune from rags to riches.

How is Audrey Hepburn so different from the Hollywood bombshells?

You think about '50s women with their stilettos and roll-ons -

their panty girdles. It's the antithesis of that.

Totally different from these very womanly Hollywood stars,

even if, like Marilyn, they're vulnerable.

They've got these womanly bodies which

rampage around the screen out of control.

Audrey wasn't just different to the bombshells,

she was beating them at their own game.

In 1961, Audrey, now with eight Hollywood films to her name,

won against Marilyn Monroe for the biggest part of her career.

It was the role that would turn her into an icon.

And every time I watch this film, I love it.

Won't you join me?

Yes, join Audrey Hepburn as you've never seen her before,

kicking over the traces and bringing to life

Truman Capote's Breakfast At Tiffany's.

SHE WHISTLES

I never could do that.

I think what she does in Breakfast At Tiffany's especially is

you see her as this incredibly elegant woman in European

couture clothes in New York

and at the beginning of Breakfast At Tiffany's with

the canyons between the skyscrapers

when she gets out of the yellow cab,

that made New York look very attractive as a fashion backdrop.

You have a special invitation to attend Audrey Hepburn's open

house on the wildest night New York ever knew.

Three actresses from the legendary party scene

in Tiffany's are still living in Hollywood.

I have come to California to find them

and get their impressions of Audrey Hepburn.

There I am in the back drinking, as usual! There I am.

-Oh, yeah.

-There's Audrey.

I love that hairdo.

I knew she was a dancer, not only because I knew she had done it but

you could see the way she moved and walked, the way she carried herself.

That's me!

-In your gold.

-In my gold lame suit.

There I am!

Lying on the sofa.

-That was me.

-And do you remember Audrey in those scenes?

Oh, yes.

Many of the big stars don't come and sit around.

They usually just come on the set as they shoot,

but she used to sit around a bit.

Not a lot, but she did sit around with everyone, yeah.

Anything you asked, "Yeah, sure." And she was so nice.

Like you were saying, she would sit around and talk to us

in between shots.

Audrey mixed with everyone on set and yet her talent set her apart.

Audrey was amazing.

You could see her soul through her eyes and she was gentle

and calm and deep.

And very much herself.

-SEAN FERRER:

-Maybe that's why, in the end, the public connected to her

because they felt down deep inside and that you cannot make up.

You can have a beautiful career like the Elizabeth Taylors, but in the

way you can't really pull the wool over the fact of who you really are.

I'd marry you for your money in a minute.

-Would you marry me for my money?

-In a minute.

So I guess it's pretty lucky neither of us is rich, huh?

Please, darling, don't sit there looking at me like that.

-Holly, I am in love with you.

-So what?

So what?! So plenty.

-I love you, you belong to me.

-No, people don't belong to people.

-Of course they do.

-I'm not going to let anyone put me in a cage.

There's definitely a sadness in Breakfast At Tiffany's.

Audrey's character, Holly Golightly, believes love is a bad thing.

She's a kid from the country who thinks love will hold her

back from having fun.

It's a very tender and sweet journey.

Everything about Audrey in Breakfast At Tiffany's has become iconic.

In 2006, the famous costume from the film was put

up for auction by Christies.

Sarah Hodgson was part of the team.

For a long time I'd wondered where this little black dress was

and it's obviously the costume most associated with

Audrey from that film.

It's the first thing you see her wearing in the film,

and for a lot of women, it's reached iconic status.

So when I first heard it was available for auction,

I was incredibly excited.

You talk about the material it was made of,

because it was very unusual, wasn't it?

It was an amazing Italian satin.

You can't get it any more, apparently, but it was incredible

because the dress almost stood up on its own. It was so...

So luxurious.

What was the atmosphere like in the auction room?

The build-up to the sale was fantastic and on the day,

people were booking phone lines, they were leaving commission bids.

It was frantic. Absolutely frantic.

And did you believe it was ever going to go for what it went for?

I was telephone bidding with a client who desperately wanted it

and the bidding went quite quickly initially

and then things started to slow down a little bit.

It was getting higher and higher and higher

and my client dropped out at about £350,000.

He said, "I can't go on any more" and the eventual buyer,

when the hammer went down at 400,000, there was literally

a second of completely stunned silence and then applause.

The black cocktail dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast

At Tiffany's has gone under the hammer in London for £410,000.

Frenzied bidding pushed the price far beyond Christie's'

estimate of £70,000.

A 45-year-old frock made the ten o'clock news.

And not just the dress from Tiffany's has lived on.

Audrey began the era of celebrities endorsing products.

Her sunglasses in the film were made by Oliver Goldsmith.

Claire Goldsmith is part of the family firm.

This is our family archive. This room isn't open to the public.

You can't come in here off the street.

In here we house the full complete Oliver Goldsmith collection.

It is one of the most complete ones in the world.

Audrey Hepburn had a unique face

and we describe it as an elfin face because it was small and we have a

frame here that we used to do a fitting for her

and it is minuscule.

-Could I try it?

-Absolutely.

But that frame was a prototype in order to make a frame

she wore in a film called Two For The Road.

-OK, that's this picture.

-Yeah, exactly.

Here I think this is what made Audrey Hepburn iconic is

Breakfast At Tiffany's - those glasses. These aren't the originals, are they?

No, a replica of the originals, but they are probably

one of the most iconic pair of sunglasses in the world, really.

-I've never known something to be copied as much.

-Yeah.

-Can I try them on?

-Please, try them on!

-Wow!

How do you think... Do you think it's me? They are so pretty.

My grandfather had a diary and when he first met her he wrote,

"I met a young lady today, her name is Audrey Hepburn.

"They tell me she's going to be a really big thing."

-And you sort of think...

-Aw!

Even then, he felt there was something about her that was

warm and likeable, you know.

All the things we love about her, really.

Audrey earned 750,000 for Breakfast At Tiffany's -

nearly 6 million today.

Enough never to work again.

She was at the top of her game, and yet for all its magic,

Audrey spent as much time as possible away from Hollywood.

-SEAN FERRER:

-She never really moved to Hollywood -

not the place nor the state of mind.

She would go there, work very hard

and once she was done with the publicity tour she would leave.

Aged 30, Audrey was ready to put down roots

and start a family with her partner actor Mel Ferrer - one of her

Broadway co-stars who supported and guided her early career.

My father was the one who really helped her to select the material

and the crews and the best writers and directors and...

You can't do it alone.

They came here to the beautiful Swiss lakes

looking for happiness and a refuge from fame.

I think it was my father,

realising she had gone from the war to a lot of hard work

and she was literally exhausted wanting to find a place

where they could come in between these long films.

Lots of fresh air, beautiful climate, dry.

Sunshine.

Big walks in the fields.

It's like Sound Of Music and then winters with the real snow

and complete silence and wonderful food and chocolate and milk

and you're...

One of THE couples of the Hollywood golden era.

Audrey and Mel married in the mountain village of Burgenstock -

a film star wedding in the Alps.

Peter Frey, who lives locally, was a page boy.

Tell me in this picture what's happening.

That's the moment they are walking out of the church after the wedding.

You see the photographers here and the people standing by.

There was quite a crowd although it was a foggy day

and I was nine years old at the time but it was a very great day to me,

because it was the first wedding I went to,

and it was the wedding of Audrey Hepburn.

-It's lovely to see Audrey's face.

-Beautiful, the way she looks at us.

Isn't it beautiful?

Yes, Audrey's face smiling at your sister as she is throwing

-petals on the floor.

-Yes.

-You look very good-looking.

-Yes!

Very good-looking.

The plan as soon as they married was to have children right away,

and yet this would be another source of heartbreak.

-Was it easy for your mother to have children?

-It was not.

She lost several pregnancies before me, one of them almost

about half term, which was a very painful experience. It was a little girl.

Difficulties conceiving

and two miscarriages caused great sadness for Audrey -

until Sean was born in 1960.

Audrey now limited her film commitments to no more than

one movie a year to focus on being a mother.

And for the best part of a decade, it worked.

These were happy years.

I do remember them putting candles on at night,

my father putting on some wonderful record and she wearing a long

house dress, they used to call those in those days.

And they would dance in the living room

and I would be shooed off to bed.

Why was it so important for Audrey to start a family?

I think it was part of the healing from her father having left

the family when she was so young.

Around this time,

Audrey finally felt ready to make contact with her long absent father.

She tracked him down in Ireland.

I think she really hoped that, like in a fairy tale, that he

would jump from that seat in the hotel in Dublin

and run to her with tears in his eyes.

That that somehow would make up for what had happened.

Instead, Audrey's father barely acknowledged her.

She knew the minute she saw him, even before she got close to him...

She wasn't going to have that relationship with her father again.

I think she was devastated.

I think she was devastated.

Audrey's mother stayed close, coming often to Switzerland,

although she always made Audrey feel not good enough.

Ella said to Audrey, "Considering you have no talent,

"it's amazing how far you got."

I think my mother hated that and yet she was trapped with the fact

that you have to do the right thing and this is the woman that

carried me all the way here and I'm going to carry her all the way.

The girl without a father who craved a better relationship with

her mother wanted a happy marriage more than anything.

And yet there were growing tensions with her husband.

While Audrey was in a position to turn down work,

Mel was struggling to find any.

Audrey was now the star of 18 films, the winner of an Oscar,

two Golden Globes and three BAFTAs.

She no longer relied on Mel Ferrer for advice or support.

In 1968, Audrey's marriage ended.

After the breakdown of her marriage, Audrey looked for answers

in the place where she first found true happiness.

I think Audrey came back to Rome in the '70s because she knew

she could be a mum here and not a film star and

she had many friends that she could connect to.

One set of friends invited Audrey on a Mediterranean cruise

recorded here.

I'm excited to be shown rarely-seen home movie

footage restored by Luca.

The man behind the camera is Audrey's future husband -

young Italian doctor Andrea Dotti.

-Here they are in Turkey...

-On holiday.

They just met. That was their first cruise.

That's where they fell in love and there's a scene there

where my mother on camera says "te amo" - "I love you".

Quite romantic. And what was she blown away with?

The one thing she would mention was the sense of humour.

My father was very young, 28 or 29, and he was a doctor,

but still studying and things.

And my mother was a full-blown star already.

They were nine years apart.

Andrea and Audrey married and Luca was born in 1970.

Two handsome sons and a warm southern Italian family was

everything Audrey wanted.

After years of looking for love, she found contentment.

-She just loved that family life.

-And she was happy being Senora Dotti.

-That's something she called herself.

-Oh, really?

There is a very funny episode being stopped by some journalist

asking me how is it being the son of Audrey Hepburn?

And genuinely I answered, "There must be a mistake.

"My mother is called Dotti, not Hepburn. It's not me."

Over the next ten years, Audrey abandoned her career.

She took her husband's name,

she picked up her children every day from school.

To the outside world, the Dottis were a happy united family.

And then, Andrea began having affairs with women his own age.

Audrey was devastated by the betrayal.

She left Andrea and went back to Hollywood.

Even after years of living away,

it must have been good to know she was still in demand as an actress.

Audrey now worked with a new generation of directors,

such as Peter Bogdanovich and Steven Spielberg.

And then, in 1980, Audrey finally met someone who shared her

early life experiences and who would stay with her until the end.

She was introduced to the Dutch actor Robert Wolders over

dinner here with her friends at this house in Beverly Hills.

Audrey came up to me and I remember so well how she struck me

with a wistfulness and her fragility.

Actually, one of the first discoveries that Audrey

and I made about one another is that we each

lived in Holland during the war - survived the war

which created a very solid base for our relationship, you know,

having lived through the war we have the same sentiments about...

Certain things.

This photograph is taken when Audrey

and I first dared to go out together in public.

You can tell how much she's basking in the...

in the attention she is getting because people were

so enthusiastic to see her.

I look scared to death, of course!

The year she met Robert was also a year of great personal loss for Audrey.

Her father was now dangerously ill.

They barely saw each other after reconnecting in the '60s.

And yet Audrey wanted to give him one last chance.

It was very hard because he was on his deathbed.

Audrey went into see him, came out very disheartened

and said that he had really nothing to say.

And then he asked to see me.

But then, and this was so miraculous,

he proceeded to talk to me about Audrey,

how proud he was of her and he knew, of course, that I was the conduit

and that I would tell her later on, which I was more than happy to do.

-SEAN FERRER:

-She realised in that moment that he was an emotional invalid,

that he couldn't... He just didn't have the ability

and she accepted it, and I think that created closure.

In 1984, Ella, Audrey's mother also died.

It was the end of a complicated relationship.

They had been to war together.

And when you go through something like that with whomever - brother,

father, friend, whether Vietnam or World War II and you've lived,

you are for ever sharing that for the rest of your life.

From early in her career, Audrey was a supporter of UNICEF -

the United Nations children's fund.

And in 1988, UNICEF asked her to be a goodwill ambassador.

This was the big chance to unite both parts of her life -

the Hollywood superstar and the woman who saw

so much suffering as a child.

She really lived a philosophy of putting others before herself,

which made her determined to the end of her life to use her celebrity for

the benefit of others, especially for the benefit of children in need.

Audrey could at last express the gratitude

she felt for the Allied food parcels which saved the lives of

so many in Holland at the end of the war.

The discipline Audrey applied to her own career was now

focused on helping others.

We did, for about five years, we did at least seven months either

doing field trips, fact-finding trips

plus fundraising events all over the world.

-SEAN FERRER:

-She spoke about the emotional hunger of children,

an emotional hunger she knew also so well.

The right to be a child, to have a real youth,

nutrition, education, love, affection,

time to be a kid, to play.

No, no! Come on! Hello. Very nice to meet you.

Have you all met my Robert?

No. Robert. Caroline, pleased to meet you.

Nowhere was the devastation caused to young children by war more

apparent than when Audrey visited Somalia in 1992.

I have something here that Audrey wrote about her experiences.

"I walked into a nightmare.

"So much worse than I could possibly have imagined.

"I wasn't prepared for this.

"And you see the villagers

"and the earth is all rippled around these places like an ocean bed.

"And I was told these were graves. There are graves everywhere."

The Somalia trip was Audrey's last.

On her return, she was rushed to hospital in Los Angeles with

stomach pains.

It was cancer of the appendix. The outlook was grim.

Vanessa Redgrave happened to be in Hollywood at the time.

She recalls one of Audrey's last public appearances.

I remember being at one of those big hotels where all the award

ceremonies are always held

and saw her come to the stage

and I knew then, and I guess everybody did, that she had cancer -

that she couldn't live long.

What struck me was...

Again that...

She was very, very humble.

Audrey was taken home to Switzerland to die -

to the house she found when she was still married to Mel Ferrer.

This was also where Sean grew up, full of childhood memories.

Colours exactly the same as they were then.

She spent two thirds of her life in Switzerland.

She lived half of her entire life in this home.

And so it really was home and it's understandable that she would

have wanted to come home at the end.

Yeah.

This is one of the last pictures she and I took together.

We were standing right here where you and I are standing

and this garden ended up being just what she had hoped for -

a place where she would take careful walks during the day, which is

when we took this photograph.

When it was only a few days before Christmas

and she couldn't go out and shop and get something and so she went in

her closet and found something that was hers to give to each one of us.

She said, it has been the best Christmas of my life.

And that made it so touching.

So magical.

Audrey Hepburn died on 20th January 1993.

At her funeral here in Switzerland, 25,000 people lined the streets.

Behind the glittering legend was a woman who overcame much pain

and suffering to find what she was looking for more than anything else.

She came home.

I think she spent a large portion of her life thinking that she

wasn't worthy of the affection and the love

and maybe by feeling that, we all gathered around her at this time,

she finally believed us.

It was a very special thing for her to come back here.

Although Audrey was admired all over the world,

I now realised the love of her family mattered the most.

As a mother and an icon, she will never be forgotten.