Before agreeing to participate in the definitive account of Audrey Hepburn, once one of the world’s highest-grossing movie stars, her son Sean Hepburn Ferrer told himself that there were already more than a thousand books about the subject. “Aside from biographies, comic books, cookbooks, fictionalized sketches, and illustrated style guides, there are fashion books with compilations of her many magazine covers and the hats she wore,” says the film producer and philanthropist. To the actor, he added, a biography “would have seemed like nonsense, and she would have rejected the idea with a grimace and said it was the last thing the world needed. But the truth is that she never anticipated the insatiable appetite across the world for her personality.” As custodian of her image, name, and identity since Hepburn passed away in 1993, Ferrer says he has witnessed an astounding development: “the crystallization of her memory into icon and legend, not only internationally but from the generation before mine and, from there, to subsequent generations of 20-somethings and teenagers.”
Appreciating that Hepburn remains on the altars of generation after generation thanks to millions of children and young people—“a fitting tribute to the sort of pied piper she became during her legendary work as a UNICEF ambassador,” he says—Ferrer conceived of Intimate Audrey, her only official biography, written with British author Wendy Holden. “I liked the idea that this manuscript could be, above all, the one that is placed at the top of the pile, the same as a history book, to ensure that there will always be an authoritative account, narrated in part by herself, with words taken from hitherto unpublished letters,” the foreword notes. Vanity Fair spoke with Ferrer about his efforts to capture his mother.
Vanity Fair: The opening pages of the book note that your mother often referred to the last stage of her life, the years she was a UNICEF ambassador, as her second and most important career of all.
That’s right. In the five years she devoted to it, 80% of the trips she made were to places that had had war or were in the middle of a conflict, such as Vietnam, Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea. This book had to contain the important things. Talking about her films didn’t make sense, because everybody knows them and besides, there is little drama in them. She was a very humble and simple person who got up early in the morning and went to work. She was on time for shoots and didn’t drink while she was shooting, so there was little drama in that part of her life. The legend is made up of true things; otherwise, it makes no sense. The goal is for people to understand that it is possible to be successful by being a humble and good person. You don’t need to misbehave to get there.
Where did she get this need to try to heal the world? Did it also have something to do with the fact that she grew up in a noble family that has always been dedicated to charity?
Yes, of course. In the end it’s a mixture of things. There is a family and cultural component, something that is passed on from one generation to the next. I myself am passing it on to my children, with whom I have traveled and done projects. My daughter Emma, for example, has worked for UNICEF and UNHCR. But in my mother’s case, it also counts that she lost something that you and I can consider commonplace: the freedom to cross the street, to be able to say what you think. Something that, on the other hand, is becoming more and more complicated today.