THE GUARDIAN: The heroine of Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s knew war and poverty, riches and fame, love and betrayal – yet claimed to have lived a ‘terribly boring’ life. Sean Hepburn Ferrer paints a very different picture in his new biography
Growing up, Sean Hepburn Ferrer says he never felt like the son of a movie star – but he very much is. His mother was Audrey Hepburn, one of the biggest names in the golden age of Hollywood, an Oscar-winner, a screen star and a fashion icon. Hundreds of millions of people all over the world recognise her from classics such as Roman Holiday, Funny Face and My Fair Lady – besotted with the way she laughs, dances, or poses tastefully in Givenchy couture.
Audrey’s image is so ubiquitous in posters, art prints, magazines, on handbags, keyrings or T-shirts, that the family has made hunting for her likeness into a game. “I must have made this crack to my kids,” Sean says. “We were probably waiting for a train or a plane that had been delayed: ‘Three minutes to find Grandma.’ And it became a thing. Now the kids are grown-up, but they do it on their own. I do it by myself and send a snapshot to my wife and we giggle privately.”
In a new book, Intimate Audrey, Sean writes his own story of https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/apr/06/audrey-hepburn-sean-hepburn-ferrer-biographyhis mother’s life. It is, he tells me over coffee at a Tuscan vineyard near his hillside home, a “behind the scenes” take on the life of one of the 20th century’s most famous women. Fewer ballgowns, more family dinners.
Sean, 65, had what he calls a “normal childhood” in Switzerland and Rome, very far from Hollywood. “She had normal priorities,” says Sean about his mother. “She realised that life is short and fickle and delicate – and you can’t want a family and then when it comes not put your elbow into it.” Even if that elbow is best known encased in a Givenchy evening glove and cradling a bag of doughnuts outside Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue at dawn. » | Pamela Hutchinson | Monday, April 6, 2026
