AUDREY HEPBURN, BELOVED ACTRESS, DEAD AT 63

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, January 21, 1993                   TAG: 9301210250
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: TOLOCHENAZ, SWITZERLAND                                LENGTH: Medium
AUDREY HEPBURN, BELOVED ACTRESS, DEAD AT 63
Audrey Hepburn, the Oscar-winning actress beloved for her charm, elegance and aristocratic bearing in films such as "Roman Holiday" and "My Fair Lady," died Wednesday. She was 63.
Hepburn, who had undergone colon cancer surgery last year, died at her home in this small village on the shores of Lake Geneva, according to a relative who answered the door at the residence. She spoke on condition of anonymity.
Hepburn epitomized high-fashion elegance and inspired many designers with her beauty, but spent her last years traveling the globe in jeans and T-shirts working for needy children as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations.
As a child, she had herself received help from the agency after surviving the last winter of World War II in Holland on a diet of mostly turnips.
"God has a most beautiful new angel," said actress Elizabeth Taylor in a statement.
Actor George Peppard, her co-star in the 1961 film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" said in a statement from Los Angeles: "It's very sad. A silver bell has been silenced."
Hepburn, who was born in Belgium and was a British citizen, was catapulted to stardom after playing a princess who goes out incognito in Rome and falls in love with a journalist in the 1953 film "Roman Holiday."
She won an Academy Award for best actress for the role. Time magazine said she was "exquisitely blending queenly dignity and bubbling mischief."
Along with "Breakfast At Tiffany's," she was nominated for an Oscar for "Sabrina" (1954); "The Nun's Story" (1959), and "Wait until Dark" (1967).
Her other films include: "Charade" (1963); "Paris When It Sizzles" (1964); "My Fair Lady" (1964); "Always" (1989).
"I never had this huge talent or a great technique," she once said of her acting. "But somehow I have had something that contributed."
She was born Audrey Hepburn-Ruston on May 4, 1929, near Brussels, Belgium. Her father, J.A. Hepburn-Ruston, was a banker of English-Irish ancestry, and her mother, Ella van Meemstra, a Dutch baroness.
After her parents divorced, she was sent to a girls' school near London, but then spent the war in Holland. After returning to London on a ballet scholarship, she was discovered as a model by fashion photographers in London and began studying acting.
After jobs in the chorus and minor roles in British movies, the French author Colette met her and insisted she play the part of Gigi when her novel of that name was adapted to the stage. The role took Hepburn to Broadway in 1951.
On the stage, she also appeared in "Ondine" in 1954.
Hepburn stopped making movies regularly in the late 1960s, but returned for several roles, including Marian with Sean Connery's Robin Hood in "Robin and Marian" in 1976. Her last film role was in Steven Spielberg's "Always" in 1989.
Hepburn became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF in 1986, visiting the suffering in Africa and appealing to governments for money. Her death "is a painful and irreplaceable loss for her family, friends, for children everywhere and UNICEF," said UNICEF director James Grant. "The children of the world have lost a true friend, and an important and eloquent advocate."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB