Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn grew up in Holland during World War II and began life with great uncertainty—not knowing when she would see her estranged father, where her next meal would come from, or even whether she would survive the war. Dance was her refuge and it brought her to the movies, where she quickly rose to stardom. After small roles in a few British features, she found herself cast opposite Gregory Peck in Roman-Holiday (1953) and helped to make the film a critical and commercial triumph. At just twenty-four, Audrey won an Academy Award, followed later that year by a Tony for her Broadway role in Ondine. A string of romantic comedies followed—Sabrina (1954), Funny Face (1957), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1960—and the fans’ romance with Audrey continued as well. Both men and women were drawn to this slender, doe-eyed beauty, so different from the blonde bombshells of the day. Yet she was also attracted to films that explored life’s hidden dramas. The Nun’s Story (1959), The Children’s Hour (1962), and Wait Until Dark (1967) expanded on her ingénue image. In pictures like Love in the Afternoon (1957) and Two for the Road (1967), she took a fresh approach to contemporary female characters, which may have been closer to her own life. She struggled to balance career and family, while also dealing with men who resisted becoming “Mr. Audrey Hepburn.” Audrey tried twice to retire from the screen, but each time she attempted to focus on her private life, she found herself wooed back by an admiring director. One such director, Richard Lester, brought her back after nine years to costar with Sean Connery in Robin and Marian (1976), while Steven Spielberg coaxed her back for her last film, Always (1989). Yet her true passions seemed to lie outside conventional marriage and Hollywood. Domestic contentment came with her last partner, fellow Dutch actor Robert Wolders, and true fulfillment arrived when she signed on as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Her own war-torn childhood was never far from her mind, prompting a serious commitment to the starving children of the world. Audrey Hepburn truly knew what mattered most, and when this very private woman bravely used her fame to mother the world, she stole our hearts all over again.

Katharine Hepburn

Broadway producers thought Katharine Hepburn was too much the individual to achieve stardom, but she caught the eye of director George Cukor, who offered her the lead in A Bill of Divorcement (1932). Despite her early success in that film and in Morning Glory (1933), by decade’s end exhibitors had labeled her box office poison. She made her comeback through the stage door when playwright Philip Barry wrote The Philadelphia Story to mirror her personality. With help from former beau Howard Hughes, she bought the play’s film rights, and its success put her right back on top. Her professional and personal life both benefited from her MGM contract, particularly when she fell in love with costar Spencer Tracy while making Woman of the Year (1942), their first of nine films together. Blessed with a strong bone structure, Katharine aged gracefully in a series of mature roles in the 1950s. Her film work kept her a star despite frequent breaks to pursue theatrical projects and care for Tracy as his health declined. She put her salary on the line so he could play opposite her in his last film, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). He died seventeen days after filming was complete. Katharine won an Oscar for the film, but she said she could never watch it because the memories were too painful. On her own, Katharine continued to triumph as the imprisoned Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter (1968) and Henry Fonda’s supportive wife in On Golden Pond (1982), the latter bringing her a record fourth Oscar for Best Actress. Katharine also turned to television, first as Amanda in an acclaimed production of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (1973) and then in an Emmy-winning performance opposite Laurence Olivier in the romantic comedy Love Among the Ruins 0975), Late in life, Katharine wrote a best-selling memoir, Me: Stories of My Life and appeared in the television documentary Katharine Hepburn: All About Me (1993). Katharine Hepburn lived life on her own terms at all times and was loved for it.

Lauren Bacall

One of the screen’s most independent women, Lauren Bacall grew up in a middle-class family in the Bronx. Her childhood interest in dance gave way to a passion for acting early on, and she studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where the young Kirk Douglas became a lifelong friend.. Her first stage shows didn’t do well, so to make ends meet she turned to modeling. A Harper’s Bazaar cover caught the eye of producer-director Howard Hawks’s wife, Slim, leading to a screen test for Bacall and the chance to make her screen debut as the star of To Have and Have Not (1944). An attack of the jitters forced her to hold her head down to keep it from shaking. But somehow all that came together to turn her into one of the sassiest, sexiest creatures ever to stalk the screen. Lauren won a horde of fans, not the least of them her leading man, Humphrey Bogart. Bogie and Baby, as they called each other, married a year later, while working on their second film with Hawks, The Big Sleep (1946). They would team up twice more before Bogart fell victim to cancer in 1957. On her own, Bacall moved to New York and reestablished herself as a stage star, first in the comedy Cactus Flower (1965), and later as the Tony award-winning star of the musicals Applause ((970), based on the classic film All About Eve, and Woman of the Year (1981). She also penned a best-selling 1979 autobiography, By Myself, which won a National Book Award. With her star persona intact, Lauren managed to make her screen appearances notable events. She joined an all-star cast for the Agatha Christie thriller Murder on the Orient Express (1974), comforted a dying John Wayne in The Shootist (1976) and capitalized on her Broadway fame as a musical star stalked by The Fan (1980. More recently she won an Oscar nomination (after over fifty years in films) for her role as Barbra Streisand’s glamorous mother in The Mirror Has Two Faces ((996) and has joined rising star Nicole Kidman in a pair of dramas, Dogville (2003) and Birth (2004). Even in her eighties, Lauren continues to possess one of the sexiest voices in the business, putting her in demand for commercial voice-overs for everything from cat food to luxury cruises.