Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn was born on May 4, 1929 in Brussels, Belgium. She was an Academy Award winning actress and a humanitarian. Her acting career earned her many Oscar nominations but is was her humanitarian work that she felt most committed to. A long-time activist for charitable causes, in 1988, Hepburn was named the official spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). She devoted all her energy to working with UNICEF. Her field missions were often physically and emotionally demanding and sometimes undertaken at great personal risk. She learned first hand about the plight of poor and displaced children in countries all over the world. She made over fifty field research visits to UNICEF-assisted projects in Sudan, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia. These trips enabled her to witness first-hand the distressing conditions of children living in war-torn and drought-ridden areas of the world. Determined to raise awareness and badly needed funds, Audrey applied her first-hand knowledge to inform Special Assemblies at the U.N., shared details with various Press Associations, and lobbied on behalf of children to World Parliaments.

Among numerous other honors, in 1990, she was awarded the Cecil B DeMille Award, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. That same year she received the George Eastman Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 1993, she was presented with the Council of Fashion Designers of America Award.

Posthumous awards included the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her work with UNICEF, a Grammy for Best Spoken Album for Children for Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales, and the Women in Film Crystal Award. Her son, Sean Ferrer, founded the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund, shortly after she passed away in 1993. It commemorates the purity of her humanitarian efforts to enrich the lives of children worldwide and continues to support a variety of children's causes throughout the world.

Hepburn’s enchanting beauty gained her recognition as an actress and her dedication to promoting understanding, tolerance and mutual respect among people gained her recognition as a truly remarkable person.

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