Affair that broke Hepburn's heart

Even before meeting William Holden, she knew all about his reputation for bedding his leading ladies — and then slinking home to his long-suffering wife.

In any case, Audrey, then 24 and at the height of her gamine beauty, was growing increasingly disillusioned with the male sex.

Just the year before, in 1952, she’d ended an engagement to the millionaire British baron James Hanson because he’d informed her that, after the wedding, he would expect her to give up her career and become a housewife.

Then, recently, she’d become entangled with American actor Mel Ferrer — who turned out to have four children and a (third) wife. Men! Who needed them?

All Audrey wanted was to get through the ordeal ahead. As the veteran of just one hit movie — Roman Holiday, shot on location in Rome with Gregory Peck — she wasn’t at all sure she’d measure up in Hollywood.

For one thing, she’d trained since her childhood in the Netherlands as a ballerina and had never had an acting lesson in her life. For another, she considered her nose too big and didn’t like her smile.

On top of that, she was self-conscious about being tall, rail-thin and flat-chested in an era when screen goddesses were required to be petite, curvy and voluptuous.

Could she hack it as a full-blown romantic lead in her new movie, Sabrina? Would she convince anyone that two brothers — played by Holden and Humphrey Bogart — actually wanted to compete for her rather under-developed charms?

At least the director, Billy Wilder, was reassuring. Audrey, he declared with great foresight, ‘might single-handedly make bazooms a thing of the past’.

Meanwhile, she was aware that she didn’t really fit into Hollywood society. Even the way she dressed — simple clothes and flat shoes — contrasted starkly with the bejewelled and sequined society hostesses. 

Yet, right now, these ladies were zoning in on her like heat-seeking missiles. In an unheard-of gesture to a newcomer, the wife of the formidable founder of movie-makers MCA, Jules Stein, organised a ‘Welcome To Hollywood’ gala in Audrey’s honour.

How could Audrey Hepburn possibly live up to expectations? It was all too much. As she waited for filming on Sabrina to start, she sat alone in her modest rented flat, chain-smoking and giving in to fits of weeping.

Bill Holden didn’t make it to Audrey’s welcome party. But he’d been enchanted by her performance in Roman Holiday and told friends that he had a crush on her.

At the same time, he was nervous. What if there was no chemistry between them? He’d been in the business long enough to know that some actresses were very different to how they appeared on screen.

On the face of it, they appeared to have little in common. Audrey had grown up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, eating bread made from ground-up tulip bulbs to survive. Holden was the son of a prosperous industrial chemist, yet from childhood he’d been attracted to danger.

As a teenager, he’d been fearless: tight-walking on telephone lines; racing his motorcycle; doing a handstand on a bridge. Even now, at 34, he 

radiated vitality and virility and often insisted on doing his own stunts.

A-list stardom, however, had been a long time in coming. He owed his big breakthrough to Wilder, who’d directed him first in Sunset Boulevard (1950) and then in Stalag 17, which was about to be released.

(dailymail.co.uk)