Born in Ixelles, Belgium, as Audrey Kathleen Ruston, Hepburn spent her childhood chiefly in the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem, Netherlands, during the Second World War. She studied ballet in Arnhem and then moved to London in 1948, where she continued to train in ballet and worked as a photographer's model. She appeared in several European films before starring in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi. Hepburn played the lead female role in Roman Holiday (1953), winning an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for her performance. She also won a Tony Award for her performance in Ondine (1954). Hepburn is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award. She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1961. Hepburn became one of the most successful film actresses in the world and performed with notable leading men such as Gregory Peck, Rex Harrison, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Fred Astaire, James Garner, Peter O'Toole and Albert Finney. She won BAFTA Awards for her performances in The Nun's Story (1959) and Charade (1963) and received Academy Award nominations for Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and Wait Until Dark (1967). She starred as Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady (1964), becoming only the third actor to receive $1,000,000 for a film role. From 1968 to 1975 she took a break from film-making to spend more time with her two sons. In 1976, she starred with Sean Connery in Robin and Marian. In 1989, she made her last film appearance in Steven Spielberg's Always.
Hepburn was voted "most beautiful woman of all time" in a poll of beauty experts by Evian.Her fashion styles also continue to be popular among women.The "little black dress" from Breakfast at Tiffany's, designed by Givenchy, sold at a Christie's auction on 5 December 2006, for £467,200 (approximately $920,000), almost seven times its £70,000 pre-sale estimate. This is the highest price paid for a dress from a film.The dress auctioned by Christie's was not the one that Hepburn actually wore in the movie. Of the two dresses that Hepburn did wear, one is held in the Givenchy archives, while the other is displayed in the Museum of Costume in Madrid.
