Audrey Kathleen van Heemstra Ruston was born in Brussels, Belgium, on May 4, 1929. She was the daughter of a British father and a Dutch mother.
She was sent to a boarding school in England and stayed with a coal miner’s family when not in school to intensify her study of the English language.
She began the study of ballet as a very small child and in 1938 her parents divorced. The following year her mother moved her to neutral Holland preceding WWII. In May 1940 the German War Machine marched through and her family lost all property, bank accounts and possession. Audrey was forced by her mother to speak only Dutch due to the Nazi occupation.
By 1945 the war escalated and Audrey barely escaped the Nazi round-up of young women to work the military kitchens. She hid for a month. “We saw young men put against the wall and shot . . . don’t discount anything awful you hear or read about the Nazis. It's worse than you could ever imagine.”
Audrey’s career began with dancing in “blackout performances,” done in secret with locked doors and drawn blinds to raise money for the Resistance. She participated in the efforts by being a secret messenger for the Resistance. Holland was finally liberated on May 4, 1945 on her sixteenth birthday.
Her ambitions leaned toward the ballet and she was even accepted by the Lambert ballet school in London. Although she had limitations due to severe malnutrition during the war, she auditioned for the chorus of High Button Shoes. She had one line – which continued for 291 performances. Her career included modeling and then some 27 movies and two TV films.
She is best noted for My Fair Lady, Gigi, Roman Holiday and she was the star in the original movie Sabrina. Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Nun were two other major early films. She played opposite Sean Connery in Robin and Marian (1976) in the tale of Robinhood, then the suspense Bloodline (1979). In the movie Always (1989) by Steven Spielberg she captures the essence of a love lost.
Audrey was married to Mel Ferrer, actor, whom she divorced. She remarried a psychiatrist, Andrea Dotti, then finally married her third husband, Robert Wolders, a former actor. She had two children, Sean Ferrer (1960) who is an actor, producer and Luca Dotti (1970) an artist.
She was sent to a boarding school in England and stayed with a coal miner’s family when not in school to intensify her study of the English language.
She began the study of ballet as a very small child and in 1938 her parents divorced. The following year her mother moved her to neutral Holland preceding WWII. In May 1940 the German War Machine marched through and her family lost all property, bank accounts and possession. Audrey was forced by her mother to speak only Dutch due to the Nazi occupation.
By 1945 the war escalated and Audrey barely escaped the Nazi round-up of young women to work the military kitchens. She hid for a month. “We saw young men put against the wall and shot . . . don’t discount anything awful you hear or read about the Nazis. It's worse than you could ever imagine.”
Audrey’s career began with dancing in “blackout performances,” done in secret with locked doors and drawn blinds to raise money for the Resistance. She participated in the efforts by being a secret messenger for the Resistance. Holland was finally liberated on May 4, 1945 on her sixteenth birthday.
Her ambitions leaned toward the ballet and she was even accepted by the Lambert ballet school in London. Although she had limitations due to severe malnutrition during the war, she auditioned for the chorus of High Button Shoes. She had one line – which continued for 291 performances. Her career included modeling and then some 27 movies and two TV films.
She is best noted for My Fair Lady, Gigi, Roman Holiday and she was the star in the original movie Sabrina. Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Nun were two other major early films. She played opposite Sean Connery in Robin and Marian (1976) in the tale of Robinhood, then the suspense Bloodline (1979). In the movie Always (1989) by Steven Spielberg she captures the essence of a love lost.
Audrey was married to Mel Ferrer, actor, whom she divorced. She remarried a psychiatrist, Andrea Dotti, then finally married her third husband, Robert Wolders, a former actor. She had two children, Sean Ferrer (1960) who is an actor, producer and Luca Dotti (1970) an artist.
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