Interview: My Mother, Audrey Hepburn: the Star’s Son Sean on Her Movies, Marriages, Good Works and Fascist Parents

Screenshot taken from this Guardian article. | Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961, directed by Blake Edwards. Photograph: Paramount/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock
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

Audrey Hepburn's Son Finally Confirms What We Thought All Along

Oct 11, 2024

Moon River - Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Desayuno con Diamantes

Nov 14, 2011 | Breakfast at Tiffany's (Desayuno con diamantes) es una película de comedia de 1961, dirigida por Blake Edwards. Protagonizada por Audrey Hepburn y George Peppard, contó con un reparto de actores secundarios que incluía a Patricia Neal, Martin Balsam, Mickey Rooney y José Luis de Vilallonga.

WIKIPEDIA: Breakfast at Tiffany's (film) »

Audrey Hepburn: Remembered | The Hollywood Collection

Feb 23, 2016 Audrey Hepburn was one of movies best-loved stars, blessed with beauty, talent, an elegant sophistication, and an enduring aura of youthful innocence.

As Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, she spoke for the world’s suffering children and families, earning an affection and admiration that only increased with news of her untimely death.

From the star herself we learn of her career, and the family and friendships that were her priority. Directors Billy Wilder, Blake Edwards and Stanley Donen, composer Henry Mancini, actors Gregory Peck, Mel Ferrer, George Peppard and Roger Moore, fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy and others, join Rob Wolders and Sean Ferrer to help complete this loving portrait. With clips from Roman Holiday, Sabrina, War and Peace, Funny Face, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Charade, My Fair Lady, Two for the Road, Robin and Marian and more.

Audrey Hepburn by Her Son | Parts 1, 2, 3 & 4

Jan 9, 2013 • An intimate portrait of Audrey Hepburn, by her son Sean Hepburn-Ferrer. Featuring many private photographs as well as clips from all her memorable films.

Audrey Hepburn : le choix de l'élégance | Reupload

Die gleiche Dokumentation ist hier auf Deutsch verfügbar.

Audrey Hepburn Interviewed on a French TV Show Entitled "Du côté de chez Fred" | 22nd May, 1989

Audrey Hepburn joins Frédéric Mitterrand to talk about her work with UNICEF.Views on YouTube: 269,825

C'était une femme si belle, élégante et sereine ! Elle était tout simplement merveilleuse ! – Mark

Audrey Hepburn - Le choix de l'élégance

Audrey Hepburn... by Her Son

Jan 9, 2013 • An intimate portrait of Audrey Hepburn, by her son Sean Hepburn-Ferrer. Featuring many private photographs as well as clips from all her memorable films. |

Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Lady?
THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY: 'Feminine values' are making a comeback but do they have any place in today's world?

The eternal question of what makes a woman a lady has reared its well-coiffed head once again this summer thanks to a raft of new experts queuing up – politely, of course – to tell British women to polish their shoes, mind their p's and q's, and generally be a little more ladylike.

While for many the very idea of ladylike behaviour is outdated, or even risible – as illustrated by the memorable Little Britain sketches in which David Walliams cries: "I am a Laydee" – a controversial book poised to hit UK bookshops next month is seeking to rescue the term from ridicule, advocating a "return to feminine values". This may not be entirely fanciful.

At the same time, sales of the conservative magazine The Lady are soaring, and Miss Debrett, the etiquette authority's new online agony aunt, is offering women a helping hand on everything from weddings to email etiquette.

In her book How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World, Jordan Christy laments the rise of the "stupid girls", represented in the public eye by such celebrities as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, declaring our "current female landscape as "embarrassing, flippant and shallow". >>> Rachel Shields | Sunday, August 30, 2009