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Authorized Biography ‘Intimate Audrey’ Offers a More Personal Portrait of Hepburn

The book uses family archives to show how wartime hardship shaped her later humanitarian focus.

Overview

  • The biography by her son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, co-written with former war correspondent Wendy Holden, is out now from Grand Central Publishing.
  • Vogue highlights childhood photos and delicate wartime drawings that survived in family albums and show her hopes during years of scarcity.
  • Ferrer says he aimed for a definitive, authorized account that brings the icon back to earth and presents her as a real person.
  • The narrative centers on World War II in the Netherlands as the spine of her story, culminating in her service as a UNICEF ambassador.
  • The book revisits a defining childhood rupture when her father left at her age six, a loss she carried into adulthood.