Hepburn never confronted her mother about her early support of Hitler and carried the weight of it for many years. Still, the two shared a bond after surviving the war, and she cared for her mother in her later years at her home in Switzerland.
“By the end of the war, she was very close to death,” her son Dotti told People in 2017. By the end of the war, he said, she had “jaundice and edema,” which her son believes caused lifelong complications. “She suffered from anemia the rest of her life,” he added.
As you may know, Audrey Hepburn had two children — Sean Hepburn Ferrer, now 58 years old, and Luca Dotti, now 49. Although the devoted mom sadly suffered a few miscarriages throughout her life, the successful births of her two sons seemed to bring her more joy than she ever thought possible.
Hepburn herself has described her father's desertion as: "One of the great traumas of my life. It left a very deep scar on me." She was reunited with him as an adult, after tracking him down in Ireland, but they had never become close, or talked about his decision to leave.
She was only 38 when she decided to raise her two sons — Sean Hepburn Ferrer, now 60, whom she shared with ex-husband Mel Ferrer, and Dotti, whom she shared with ex-husband Andrea Dotti — quietly in Switzerland.
How many children did Audrey Hepburn give birth to?
The actor starred in countless movies and won an Academy Award and multiple Golden Globe Awards. Outside of her acclaim in Hollywood, fans were intrigued by Hepburn's personal life. Throughout her lifetime, Hepburn had two children: Sean Hepburn Ferrer and Luca Dotti. Hepburn died in 1993 at the age of 63.
Known for her independence, intelligence and acting prowess, Hepburn was so dedicated to her craft that she avoided having children as she believed it could interfere with her career. She once said: “I would have been a terrible mother, because I'm basically a very selfish human being.”
The luminous Audrey Hepburn died on January 20, 1993, near her home in Lausanne, Switzerland. Ms. Hepburn's handwritten will was ambiguous about the items she wished to gift. Her sons, Sean Ferrer and Luca Dotti were promised a 50/50 split of their mother's estate.
She really was humble. She did all of this to make up for those shortcomings. She said, 'Well, I'm not a great actress, I don't really look that great, so I had better do everything else I can to get it straight'.”
“She was crazy about the pasta,”, younger son Dotti recalls in a prior People interview. In his own book Audrey at Home, Dotti wrote, “Mum had a serious pasta addiction. She couldn't do without pasta.”
On May 4, 1929, Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston—who will one day be better known to legions of film fans as Audrey Hepburn—is born near Brussels, Belgium. The daughter of an English banker and a Dutch baroness, Hepburn was attending school in London when World War II erupted in Europe.
From her childhood during World War II to her cancer diagnosis in her later years, Hepburn dealt with great obstacles during her lifetime, many of which are detailed in “Little Audrey's Daydream.” But Ferrer Hepburn also revealed another struggle — his mother experienced pregnancy loss multiple times before and after ...
Essential tremor is less well known than Parkinson's disease, but it's far more common. For many, the late actress Katherine Hepburn provided an indelible public image of essential tremor. Her quavering voice and trembling hands unmistakably betrayed the disorder.
The qualities that made Audrey Hepburn a great actress were, above all, also those that made her a great person: her genuine compassion and strength of character. Ultimately, it's not the roles she played that made her an enduring cultural icon, but who she was. And this is why we (still) love Audrey Hepburn.
Her mother changed her name to Edda during the war because she felt the name Audrey, being English, could prove to be a problem with the occupiers during the war. After the war Audrey again assumed her birth name, and later she adopted the now famous stage and screen name of Audrey Hepburn for the rest of her life.
After starring in the thriller Wait Until Dark (1967), Audrey Hepburn went into semi-retirement. She nonetheless appeared in a few films after 1975, including Robin and Marian (1976). In 1988 she started a new career as a special goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. She worked for the organization until her death in 1993.
According to a biography of Hepburn written by Barry Paris in 1996 here , Hepburn read the Levenson poem to her two sons and her son Sean Hepburn Ferrer later read it at her funeral.
