Audrey Hepburn’s five most overlooked performances
The word “icon” is tossed around a lot these days, but if there is anyone who fits the definition, it’s Audrey Hepburn. The photograph of her in a black gown holding a long cigarette holder in Breakfast at Tiffany’s has become as ubiquitous an image as Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ or Andy Warhol’s pop art version of Marilyn Monroe.
During a time in Hollywood when curvy blondes were the most popular form of femininity, Hepburn’s doe eyes and lithe frame were exotic, a breath of fresh air in an industry obsessed with excessive glamour. She exuded grace and innocence, but was adept in comedic roles. But above all, she had the kind of star power that was intangible and electrifying, a quality that only a handful of actors have possessed before or since.
Given her outsized role in popular culture, Hepburn’s filmography is remarkably short. She appeared in several bit parts in the early 1950s, but after her breakout role as Princess Ann in William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (for which she won her only Oscar), she only made 21 movies before her death in 1993.
For a star whose movies are still so revered and scant, it may seem unlikely that there are any unappreciated performances. However, discussions about Hepburn tend to revolve around only a handful of her films. Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and My Fair Lady are the ones that are most often mentioned, but those hardly scratch the surface of her most winning performances.
There are worse ways to appreciate Hepburn’s career than going through every film one by one, but if that’s not in the cards, here are five movies to get you started.
Audrey Hepburn’s five most underrated performances:
5. The Children’s Hour (William Wyler, 1961)
Homosexuality was illegal in the UK until 1967, and in the US, it wasn’t legal in every state until 2003. When Lillian Hellman’s play, The Children’s Hour, was first staged in 1934, it was, not surprisingly, a scandal. It follows the breakdown of a community when a child at a boarding school accuses two of her teachers of having a lesbian affair. William Wyler adapted the play in 1936 for the screen, but he was forced to remove the homosexual plot because of the Hayes Code. In 1961, he adapted it again, this time with its original subject matter.
By 21st-century standards, The Children’s Hour is still woefully outdated. Starring Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine as the two women at the centre of the scandal, it focuses on shame, gossip, and the impossibility of living with homosexuality. However, its themes of the insidious nature of rumours and the stigma that still exists around queerness are still relevant, and Hepburn gives one of her best performances.
MacLaine’s role is meatier. As Martha, she is the only one who confesses her feelings. Her coming out scene is raw and painful, full of confusion and self-loathing. As Karen, Hepburn gives a much quieter performance. It’s unclear whether she does, in fact, harbour similar feelings for Martha, but her repressed emotions and attempts to keep a serene exterior are arguably even more heartbreaking powerful.
4. Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967)
Hepburn didn’t star in many thrillers. Most of her films were either comedies, romances, or romantic comedies. This makes Wait Until Dark a refreshing aberration, and it just so happens to be a great film, too. In it, Hepburn plays a blind woman whose husband is unknowingly given a doll filled with drugs by a stranger at the airport. When he goes on a work trip, Hepburn’s character is left alone in their apartment when a group of criminals show up to find the contraband.
Director Terence Young turned a gimmicky set-up into one of the most tense, nasty thrillers of the decade. Led by Alan Arkin, the gang of criminals is coldly sadistic, leveraging Hepburn’s by posing as different people and gaining her trust. Her incremental realisation that she can’t trust anyone, no matter who they say they are, creates an ongoing infliction of torture that doesn’t require blood or physical violence to make your blood run cold.
The film also features one of the most terrifying jump-scares in cinema history. James Cameron was so impressed when he saw it that he continues to claim that it is more shocking than anything in Alien or even Psycho. In short, Wait Until Dark not only has one of Hepburn’s most overlooked performances, but it is also one of the most overlooked thrillers.
3. How to Steal a Million (William Wyler, 1966)
One of Hepburn’s greatest strengths was comedy. She might not have had the rapid-fire line delivery of Katharine Hepburn or Carole Lombard, but she had an innate silliness that was a key to her infectious charm. There are elements of it in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but 1966’s heist comedy How to Steal a Million provides her with the perfect comedic sparring partner in Peter O’Toole.
In the film, Hepburn plays Nicole, the daughter of a fabulously wealthy art collector who happens to be an art forger. He offers to lend his knock-off version of a Cellini statue to a prominent art museum, not realising that the museum will forensically test it to verify its authenticity. To save her father from being discovered as a criminal, Nicole enlists a charming art thief (O’Toole) to help her steal the statue from the museum before it can be inspected.
For anyone who likes the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, this movie is the gold standard of the genre, and Hepburn and O’Toole have magnetic chemistry. Playing a charming rogue with no scruples, he is in his element. Meanwhile, she is charmingly nonchalant about the risks they face and full of infectious optimism. One of the most commendable aspects of the film is that it treats Hepburn like the movie star she is. Many films tried to convince audiences that she was an ugly duckling, but in How to Steal a Million, O’Toole’s character and everyone else becomes instantly smitten with her. Making this a plot point allows Hepburn to shine, and puts O’Toole in his place.
2. Two for the Road (Stanley Donen, 1967
One thing you don’t see very often in Hepburn’s filmography is movies in which she becomes an adult. It’s true that she emanated an endearing innocence that made her perfect for the roles of sheltered young women and women who never really grew up. But Stanley Donen’s unsentimental drama Two for the Road proves she had much more to offer than wide-eyed guilelessness. In the film, she and Albert Finney play Joanna and Mark Wallace, a married couple visiting St Tropez who reminisce about the many times they’ve visited the area during their troubled ten-year relationship.
There have been many harrowing dramas about relationships, from Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine. What is remarkable about Two for the Road is how it uses the trappings of classic Hollywood (Donen was known for his Technicolor musicals like Singin’ in the Rain, Funny Face, and On the Town), while telling a ruthlessly unsentimental story of marital ambivalence. As Joanna and Mark discuss their relationship, we see vignettes of their first meeting as students in the early ‘50s, the arrival of their daughter, their mutual infidelity and dishonesty, and the bones of contention they return to again and again.
Hepburn and Finney have an unusual type of chemistry in the film. Instead of the electric chemistry that makes romantic comedies click into place, they have a closeness that makes you believe they’ve known each other inside and out for more than a decade. Shot on location in France by a master of Hollywood spectacle, Two for the Road is gorgeous to look at and alternately funny, heartbreaking, strikingly candid.
1. Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963)
Calling Charade underrated is like saying Stanley Kubrick really deserves some respect – it’s a classic beloved by many. But any time there is an excuse to get people to watch this film, it’s worth seizing with both hands. What makes it such a gem of Hepburn’s filmography is her chemistry with Cary Grant. He was more than two decades older than her, but no other leading man has ever managed to stay as ageless as he did throughout his career, and at 34, Hepburn was more than capable of holding her own.
Charade is a classic caper. It stars Hepburn as a woman on the brink of divorce who simultaneously learns that her husband has been murdered and that he was not the man she thought he was. When she meets Grant’s character, a charming American whose identity seems to be in constant flux, she flirts with him relentlessly while trying to escape a group of men who seem determined to kill her.
The film is often called the Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made, but that undersells its humour. There are plenty of grisly deaths and moments of heart-pounding suspense, but it is a comedy first and foremost. Hepburn and Grant are the dream duo of Hollywood, and their easy rapport is such a joy to watch that it’s a crime they were never paired in other movies. Their scenes would have been enough to carry the whole film, but they are aided by a razor-sharp script and stellar supporting performances from Walter Matthau and James Coburn.
