Audrey Hepburn’s deep connection to Anne Frank’s diary: “I would never be the same again”
Most well known for her roles in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and My Fair Lady, or her Oscar-winning performance in Roman Holiday Audrey Hepburn has left an enduring mark on Hollywood and popular culture. Her elegant, understated performances brought a quiet but powerful presence to the screen, with her glamour and sophistication making her ideal for roles like Holly Golightly and Eliza Doolittle, both characters who take strides to carve out their own identity.
Hepburn may have found that these stories of personal struggle were something that she was able to relate to, drawing on her own experiences growing up during the tension of war torn Europe during the Second World War.
Hepburn was born into Dutch aristocracy and during the war, would perform ballet to raise money for the Dutch resistance against the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. These memories of her youth were revealed in the book Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II, where author Robert Matzen also revealed a connection that Hepburn felt with Anne Frank, whose diary would shine a light on the true horrors that the Jewish population of Europe were subjected to during the occupation. “I’ve never been the same again,” Hepburn would say when asked about her first time reading the diary.
Both Hepburn and Frank were young girls living in the Netherlands during the war, and were the same age at the time of the Nazi’s occupation, although the two never met, they were both deeply affected by the experiences they had and saw. Despite not feeling the vivid oppression Frank describes in her book, Hepburn still felt the plight. Hepburn’s family faced food shortages and her brother was sent away to a labour camp, although able to survive the war remaining in their home the Hepburn family were deeply connected to the Dutch resistance.
When she read Anne Frank’s Diary for the first time, Hepburn says she “didn’t know what I was going to read” – first encountering the book before it was published, the actor was living in an apartment below the publishing house that was working on the book in 1946. The editor believed that Hepburn might find the book of interest, considering her own experiences during the war. “I became hysterical,” Hepburn claims, later referring to Frank as her “soul sister” and becoming one of the first to visit the house in Amsterdam.
Hepburn would turn down the offer to portray Frank in the 1959 film adaptation, feeling that her deeply personal connection to the experiences would be too emotionally overwhelming to be able to properly honour the struggle that Frank experienced.
Audrey Hepburn would spend her final years working with UNICEF, supporting children affected by war, and credits her connection to Anne Frank as part of the inspiration to take up the charity work that defined her later life.
