The heartbreaking backstory that the legendary Hollywood actress Audrey Hepburn refused to appear in one of the era's biggest films because of the horrific trauma she endured as a child under Nazi-occupied Netherlands has been revealed.
According to People on the 1st (local time), the recently published official biography of Audrey Hepburn, "Intimate Audrey," contains the inner wounds she carried throughout her life after experiencing the horrors of World War II as a teenager.
Hepburn not only came close to death from starvation during her life, she also witnessed neighbors being dragged away by the Nazis. In interviews she recalled the atrocities of the Nazis, saying, "It was the worst kind of terror. I saw Jewish families being loaded onto trains like cargo. I cannot forget the faces looking out at us from inside."
In particular, the story of "a little girl in a red coat" remembered by Hepburn was later told to director Steven Spielberg, who worked with her on her final film Always (1989), and it was reborn as the famous "girl in the red coat" scene in Spielberg's masterpiece Schindler's List.
These tragic experiences left indelible scars on Hepburn. In 1946, at 17, she received and read a manuscript from a neighbor who was a publisher that would later be known to the world as Anne Frank's diary. Hepburn cried for days after reading the book because among the Nazi hostage executions recorded in Anne Frank's diary was her own uncle Otto. Later she told her son, "Anne wrote exactly what I experienced and felt. It felt like my war memories were being replayed."
After rising to the height of stardom in Hollywood with Roman Holiday (1953), 20th Century Fox and director George Stevens offered Hepburn the role of Anne Frank in a film adaptation of Anne Frank's diary. After much deliberation, Hepburn declined the role. Even rereading the book would trigger hysterical symptoms for days and mentally completely break her down as childhood nightmares resumed. Ultimately, the role went to Millie Perkins.
Although she declined the film role, Hepburn carried Anne Frank's words in her heart for life. The pain she experienced was also behind her later work as a UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) goodwill ambassador, dedicating herself to marginalized children around the world. Hepburn once told her children, "The war left me with a deep understanding of human suffering. What I saw during the occupation made me thoroughly realistic."
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