The Midnight Palace

Sean Hepburn Ferrer is the son of legendary actress and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn. He recently completed his fantastic book, "Audrey Hepburn: An Elegant Spirit". In his book, Sean details the loving relationship he had with his mother, as well as the unique and giving person that she was in everyday life. Through her films and her work with UNICEF, Audrey was able to connect with people on a number of levels. She has resonated in the hearts of many people in many different countries throughout the world. Sean also wrote the foreword for "The Audrey Hepburn Treasures" book, a beautiful collection of photographs, mementos and keepsakes from his mother's life and career. Today, Sean is the chairman of The Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund, which is part of the official website www.audreyhepburn.com. Sean recently agreed to take some time from his busy schedule to speak with us about his mother, her career and her countless humanitarian efforts. He also gave some great insight in to the process of writing his book. You can listen to the audio by clicking the play button on the player below.

MP: Today I?m speaking with Sean Hepburn Ferrer, the son of actress and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn. He recently completed his book titled ?Audrey Hepburn ? An Elegant Spirit?. Sean, first and foremost, thank you so much for speaking with me today.

Sean: It's a pleasure Gary.

MP: Your mother Audrey was a child in Europe during World War II and she experienced first-hand the effects of being without. Can you give an idea as to how these experiences shaped the early years of her life?

Sean: I think that those experiences, living in the country which was the longest occupied during World War II, which is Holland, as well as other experiences she had throughout her life, all ultimately of course contributed to making her the person that she was. But in the end the person that she was, was not just a wonderful actress, person and human being, but also someone who decided to take that a step further. Her way, if you may, of thanking the community and her public for giving her the opportunity to have a career, to be an independent single mom for part of her life and so forth, was to do the work she did at the end of her life, the humanitarian work through the work she did for UNICEF.

MP: Your mother?s initial dream was to be a ballerina. If I can quote her, she said: ?From the age of six to twenty, I dreamed of only one thing, to be a dancer?. She?d taken ballet and she'd worked as hard as anybody can work, but her instructor suggested that she would be better suited as a second ballerina. How did your mother take that disappointment and redirect it into a film career?

Sean: Well that's interesting because today's sort of fad would be if somebody puts you down, you keep pushing harder. In her generation you didn't do that, you decided who you trusted and whose advice you felt was invaluable. The woman that said those words to her was Marie Rambert who had the work with Nijinsky, I mean she was the classical ballet teacher in London after the war. Of course, she said those words for a series of reasons. One, and probably the most important, my mother was too tall and therefore it would've been difficult to dance with yesteryear's ballet dancers who were minute and may not even have been able to lift her over their head. But, also because she had suffered from a certain amount of malnutrition during the war, and as a result of that wasn't able to train and have muscle development and so forth, in keeping with other dancers who presented themselves during the same period. So, I think that what happened at that point, she didn't sit around and feel bad for herself. Of course, she was tremendously disappointed because this was the teenage dream which had carried her through the disappearance of her father, or the abandonment of her father should I say, carried her through the war and the invasion and all those difficult times. But, they had no choice, they had to move forward. They had nothing after the war and so she went to work as a chorus girl and from that she got little itty bitty parts. Then she was discovered on the set of the little funny comedy, this was being shot in the south of France, by Colette, the famous writer who was at the time casting for "Gigi". Of course, once having been chosen to become the new Gigi on Broadway, that is when the scouts from Paramount found her for "Roman Holiday" and the rest is history.

MP: ?Roman Holiday? as you mentioned with Gregory Peck and 1954?s ?Sabrina? with William Holden and Humphrey Bogart, were almost like premonitions that your mother would become a great star. How important do you think these films were in jump-starting her film career?

Sean: Well, I think you can't attribute, yes it jump-starts, but are the little parts that get you seen the first time by the professionals more important or less important than the big starring roles? I think what's extraordinary is the premonition that Gregory Peck had when he was sent his contract by his agent. He had top billing above the title and then underneath the title obviously would've said something like "introducing Audrey Hepburn", because his stature at the time was huge, he was one of the top three stars in the world. Very simply and very sweetly he said "You're crazy, she's going to be a huge star. I don't want to look like a jerk later on for having done that, I want us both to be above the title". So after having worked with her in Rome, and she really hadn't done anything meaningful except for the play on Broadway, he knew already. Of course, the bottom line is his tremendous generosity. Do you know anyone today who might do something like this? So it was a different generation. But I think that each and every one of her films, and she hasn't made as many as other stars like Elizabeth Taylor, but I think that each pearl built a beautiful necklace, each playing a different role. I think that "My Fair Lady" was a key film, I think that "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is the sacred monster like everyone has, a particular film that's sort of the jewel of the crown and you don't know it while you're making it! But it turns out that way. Did Marilyn Monroe know that "Some Like It Hot" or "The Misfits" would be an important film? Probably not. We never prepared for that.

MP: In 1957, your mother made ?Funny Face? with Fred Astaire. Interestingly enough, as you said, although she?d played ?Gigi? on Broadway, she turned down the lead role in the film version of ?Gigi? in order to make ?Funny Face?. Do you think that she gravitated towards the role of Jo Stockton because she would have the opportunity to be a dancer in that film?

Sean: Absolutely. I think that the dance that had been bottled up like a genie for years inside of her was released on that film. What a wonderful satisfaction and what a moment to be able to do it by the side of Fred Astaire. Obviously he was aging a bit and relaxing at that time of his career and starting to take it easy, but she, at that time, her stature had grown tremendously so she asked for him to be the co-star. But it was an extraordinary experience.

MP: To this day, there seems to be a fascination with your mother, more so than with many other popular stars. It?s as if she?s on her own pedestal, under her own light. Obviously as her son you have a million reasons as to what made her unique. But, what is it about your mother, in your opinion, that fuels the public?s admiration?

Sean: You know, there has to be something mysterious that no one can explain. Certainly I am no expert, especially since I lack complete objectivity. She's my mother so I know why I love her and why she means so much to me. She, worst than me, couldn't see it because she saw herself as too thin, flat chested, feet too big for her size, bump on her nose, etc... Maybe that's one of the ingredients. Maybe, as I said in my book, true beauty is not one that looks upon itself in the mirror but one that just is, without the knowledge of it. I described it, tried to sort of make a parable about it with the young fawn that's drinking from the river. You step on a branch and the crackling sound just makes them look up with those big eyes. He just is. He doesn't know that he's particularly beautiful or elegant. But he is the most beautiful animal in the forest in that moment, because he just is himself. Maybe that's what's amazing about her. Maybe it's the fact that she represents the girl next door that looks smashing because of the way she feels inside. We see that a lot in European girls, I think that's become sort of like a myth. You know, the young girl in Italy, she's got a little black tube skirt and the jewels and the glasses and she looks like a million bucks. She doesn't have to have an Aston Martin or a fur coat. I think that we're talking about that kind of ingredient. We're talking about what made her, and the background, maybe the fact that there is a fair amount of nobility in her background. I'm not talking about the kind of nobility that is acquired, but the kind of nobility that is passed on as a result of your background and so that makes her stand a little bit straighter. Maybe the fact that she had to fight for survival through the war made her be a certain way that had an effect on people. I never saw anybody really misbehave or be aggressive or fall down drunk before her, ever. She sort of had a thing when she entered the room that everybody would be on their best behavior. If they weren't going to be on their best behavior then it just wasn't going to happen. Maybe it was her sense of style and her need to, through the way that she did with Hubert de Givenchy and created these magical pieces of dressing which really came off the rack. They were both starting off so he didn't go off and design clothes for her, they would go in the back room at the fashion show and they'd pick three or four pieces. Apparently, she would take everything off, the ribbon, this and that, leaving nothing but the essential which made him absolutely crazy. But here, fifty years later, she's still referred to as a symbol of pure elegance. So I think that it's all of those things and I think there's a certain amount of safety because of her choices, because of who she was at the end of her life which sort of closed the loop and sort of gave confirmation to everyone that the young, beautiful twig that they'd all fallen in love with fifty years before had grown into a beautiful oak tree. So, all of these little facets put together make for someone that is safe and dear to hold on to.

MP: Now with all of those things that you mentioned, your mother has become an icon, and most often we see photos of her as Holly Golightly in 1961?s ?Breakfast at Tiffany's?. Not only has she become the representation of the film, but her black dress and her rendition of ?Moon River? are also signature elements. In your book you mentioned that your mother never talked about her own films, but were you able to get an idea as to how she felt about the Holly Golightly character becoming so legendary?

Sean: I don't think she realized any of the legend and neither did we. People often ask me "what was it like to be the son of a superstar?" and I say I have no idea, because when I grew up we didn't have video, we didn't have a projection room at home, we weren't that kind of family. We had two black and white channels, I'm dating myself now. So I'd catch a glimpse and then another, and pretty soon I'd realize when I would come to LA for a summer holiday and her dear friend Connie did have a projection room, once in a while we'd get a peek at one of her films and we started to realize. She had 16mm copies, which is what the studios gave the stars at the time, they didn't send you a CD, they'd send you a 16mm. So I had an old projector and I started looking at the films upstairs in the attic and I started to realize that this was important. By then, I'm absorbed by my own career and it really wasn't until she passed away, until we saw over 25,000 people line the streets of a small 600-inhabitant village in the middle of Switzerland, until we saw the millions of letters pouring in. The post office had to dispatch two special people to deliver for the weeks before she passed away. It wasn't until we saw all of these things that we started to realize that something more had happened. Then we all realized, and certainly she never realized it. She was very touched by the president giving her the Presidential Medal and she was told that Greg had gotten the board to vote for her to receive the Lifetime Achievement, which in a way is nicer than just a regular Oscar because it says "your career was beautiful but so are you". But did it matter so much at the end? I don't think that she did it for those reasons. I think she did it because of her Victorian childhood, because it's the only thing you can do, because if the house across the street is burning down and the fire truck isn't there, people start to throw buckets of water.

MP: Can you describe what it?s like for you now to watch your mother?s films?

Sean: Some are easier to watch than others. It's easier for me to watch the earlier movies, I have memories of her then. But, it's much harder to watch "Always" and even though it wasn't a starring role, how interesting that in her last role she would play sort of an ethereal character, a God-like person. That's the way she looked like at home and that's the way I remember her and that's the way she was like for my adult years. So it has a very special meaning, I'm certainly not going to hide that, it's harder for me. Thank God that it's not those images, apart from the work we do through her foundation, and it is the images from the classic films that are used more often. But it's interesting, I could be in a hotel room in Tokyo or walking through a train station in Italy or whatever and there she is. You learn to live with it, you learn to separate. My mother, the woman who brought me to school or bought me school books or hugged me in the middle of the night when I was scared, she's not here anymore but the star is left, the work. It's no different than if your parent was a writer and you read and hear the voice, it must have the same effect, or if you hear a beautiful piece of music or look at a piece of architecture or if you just look at family photos. They're just different degrees. But in the end, is the pain any greater or smaller? Probably not.

MP: There were so many great films of your mother?s that followed ?Breakfast at Tiffany's?, there was ?Charade? with Cary Grant, ?My Fair Lady?, ?How to Steal a Million?, ?Wait Until Dark?. But, I?d like to switch gears and talk about Audrey Hepburn outside of Hollywood. I don?t think that people understand how much of an impact she made through her work with UNICEF. When did she begin working with UNICEF and what was her initial motivation for doing so?

Sean: She was invited by her cousin who was the Dutch Counsel in Macao, and they had organized a fund raiser and they were going to have a beautiful orchestra, your typical dinner-gala thing with a nice meal and auction and so forth. They asked her to speak and she did it so beautifully, and I believe it was a UNICEF event, that the executive director of UNICEF, Jim Grant at the time, he passed away a few years after she did, but he was so impressed by the way she connected to the issues that he offered her the job right there and then. She accepted with a dollar a year contract and in that moment she was the least paid actress in Hollywood.

MP: One of the things that really struck a chord with me when I was reading your book was that your mother never had the Hollywood ego. She remained humble and grounded her entire life and believed she was no different than anyone else. Do you think that she was able to connect with the less fortunate on such a deep level because of her humility?

Sean: I think yes, certainly, but not only that, I think that all actors, and the reason why you see so many doing such wonderful things to help the needy, becoming a good actor, developing a particular muscle which enables you to sort of, as she described it and this was her way "to put yourself in the other person's shoes". So she actually put herself in the shoes of Princess Ann or Jo or all of her characters and felt the things that they would've felt in that moment. I think that became a sort of unmanageable tool in certain respects. When she would find herself in the middle of the refugee camp with 30,000 people at different degrees of death or close to death and children would disappear every day, I think that became a loudspeaker in to her own ear. Then she came back and tried to contain her rage on some level, as much as possible, and to describe what she felt and what she'd seen and how she certainly did not believe in collective guilt but she certainly did believe in collective responsibility. I think we're reminded of that in this country when we see the way our government has treated disasters like the Louisiana flood and so forth. I feel we've treated that state as if they were not a part of our Union, as if they were a third-world country. I certainly see the way we've expended monies on the war in Iraq. How much more we could have done with that money elsewhere! It wasn't about retribution, if we truly are fighting terrorism, it's about education and education has to be hand-in-hand and play an important role with belief and spiritual direction in life. That's the best way to supply and to reaffirm democracy everywhere. Anyway, I don't want to divert away from those issues. So I think yes, she predicted a lot of things that are happening today because obviously they are able to. She wasn't some voyeur, she didn't have a vision unto the future but a lot of the cataclysms and the humanitarian crises which are taking place today because we haven't been able to address them. We see the Sudan back to where it was twelve years ago, what a tragedy.

MP: Your mother was asked on numerous occasions to write her own book, but she never wanted to because she felt her life wasn?t interesting enough. Was it difficult for you, as her son, to write a book about her life?

Sean: Well yes very, and as I was saying to you before we started the interview, and you were being so sweet about the book, I delivered it three years after I was supposed to and never took the advance because at every point I wanted to have the freedom to be able to walk away from it if I felt it wasn't going to be right. In the end what I've learned that's most valuable is if you really talk about what matters, what's important, if you go below the level of the feelings and the emotions and you go below the blame, and you really take responsibility for the person you're writing for, then it's okay to talk about everything. Then when it was right I decided to publish it. At that point I had a signed contract and The Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund received all of my proceeds. It was difficult because when you love someone of course you're not objective but I knew that going in. I wasn't going to write a biography because there has been wonderfully well-researched, well I think the Barry Paris book is probably the most accurate and the best researched. A lot of people write, every few years you see a biography come out and basically what they do is they pick up two or three books that have been written before and sort of repackage them, take the money and put it in their pocket and then go on to the next thing. But I think that Barry did something, he actually took a year out of his life and went to Holland and truly put forth a tremendous effort. So I wasn't going to compete with that because that had been done. But the original reason for writing the book, the book started off as a thirty page letter to my children and my brother's children. I felt that one day they would grow up and they'd turn on the TV or put in a DVD or go to the movies and wonder who was this bigger-than-life grandmother really. What was she like? All of this sat fresh, this whole experience sat fresh, this time we had together where we had the opportunity to talk about a lot of her thoughts and philosophies about life, I felt maybe I should put it down so that they would have something. Of course somebody read it and asked my permission to give it to a friend who's a famous literary agent and the rest sort of happened as it did. But I only agreed to do it so that the Fund would benefit by it and that's really part of what we do everyday, try to create projects and licenses and products that have a life span, a little bit more than just a dinner party where everybody turns into a pumpkin at midnight. I think it's done really well, it's sold over a half a million copies worldwide so far and so the Fund is getting a nice little Christmas check every year.

MP: How do you think your mother would react to the book herself?

Sean: Oh she'd go on and say none of it is true and it's too much. She was very shy and very understated and wouldn't want all the accolades that come with the book. Obviously I'm not there ringing the bell but as you read it, it's clear that she is a pretty special person, (she would) insist upon the fact that she's just a regular person, that she did the best she could. I love the way she used to say early on in her years for UNICEF, she'd say "I know very little about politics but am a mother and will travel", and she'd sort of say it that way, she'd sort of put it that she was just a regular person who had the opportunity, instead of using her name to sell sheets and towels or perfumes or whatever, she would use it to better the life of children if possible.

MP: There?s an official website, which is www.audreyhepburn.com. I?ve visited numerous times, but for those who haven?t, can you give an overview of the site?s primary objective?

Sean: Well, the site is really the Foundation's site. There's some beautiful photographs which of course help to make it a complete site but the purpose really is to learn more about what we do, why we do it, what the projects are, the very strong and sort of centerpiece link to UNICEF, which is the organization that she worked with and which today is still the largest child-related non for profit in the world. Of course it isn't an NGO, it is a government organization but they have a budget of one billion dollars a year, and believe me they need a whole lot more. We participate with them in an existing educational program which aims to educate over a hundred million children all over the world, two-thirds of whom are girls. If that program was to be implemented tomorrow, it would probably cost in the neighborhood of eight billion a year. So, UNICEF is a tremendous organization, they do so much with that billion. If you think of what the war is costing in Iraq, you realize that mobilizing people and sending them to foreign countries to address crisis is an amazing feat, and a very costly one at that. So, they're quite extraordinary, they really squeeze the value out of every dollar more than you can imagine. So we work with them, we have several beautiful exhibits which I just spent a year and a half in Japan, and then we have a music collection of world music. We have released the first one very discreetly because we didn't get much of an advertising budget but it's done quite well and then we're going to do several more, possibly one day we'll do a concert. We have another music project which I'm not talking about quite yet but which is going to be interesting because it's going to be released in a special way, sort of a novel way. So we're doing what we can. We're a small organization, we only have one and a half employees, but apart from raising what we consider to be a substantial amount of money, but certainly in comparison to Bill Gates' foundation is a grain of sand, but we also, I think keep the crusade alive and that's really all we can do at an individual level today, is to keep the crusade alive with donations and so forth, but with the final aim to take a position with our government, like organizations like ONE.org, these people really, really, really understand what it's all about. You have to pressure the politicians to honor, forget about creating new projects, to honor and meet the demands of projects that they have agreed to sign up on. This educational project, all the governments of the world have agreed that it needs to be done. The one and a half percent fund for poverty which my mother pushed so hard for, and which is now in effect but not everyone is paying their dues and they're late and it's difficult because they have other pressing needs. But when you have an economy like the one America has, we have to take a position that it is vital to our survival that we play a role in uniting the world, in truly globalizing the world so that we'll all make it rather than sort of survive as a fortunate village and a fortress in a devastated world. Ultimately, of the six billion people living on this planet today, under one billion are living the life that you and I know, the rest of it, half of them are living on less than two dollars a day and the other half on less than one dollar a day. So, when we talk about globalization, we're not being honest. Globalizing the people that have the way to participate in it but the rest of the world is still behind. I do believe it's not sustainable, we talk about sustainability in the environment or agriculture and our resources, but it's not sustainable to believe that somehow we can continue to use up all of the resources we have, and not address the issues of other people who really have nothing to globalize with. It's not like they had it and they wasted it. They don't, either for political reasons or other out of their control reasons, have never had the opportunity to support themselves.

MP: Your mother?s black dress from ?Breakfast at Tiffany's? was recently auctioned off. It sold for over $800,000.

Sean: Actually with the commissions, it's a million because when you sell something at Christie's, both the seller and the buyer pay 10%, so it's a million bucks.

MP: Over a million. The proceeds from that auction were donated to build schools for impoverished children. How were you involved with that and are there any similar events planned for the future?

Sean: Well, we have had our own auction where we raised over a quarter of a million dollars from personal items. This was a few years ago. Certainly when Hubert, who was a dear friend of my mother's, decided to do this, we talked about it and we gave it our blessing. It was his dress, he had donated all of the other dresses that he had to us for this exhibit and we had had that dress on loan and ultimately because of the stress that an exhibit puts on clothes, we actually went back to LVMH with de Givenchy and had a similar dress rebuilt by the four ladies who had built it originally. Two had retired, two were still there but the materials were still available. So there are not three of those dresses in the world, one was just sold for the million bucks we were talking about. A fantastic organization, the gentleman is a wonderful writer who wrote "City of Joy" and has the beautiful schools in India, so whether we actually write the check or it's done by someone close to us, it makes no difference, the result is the same and we're thrilled about it. Interestingly enough, LVMH who already had the dress that they were loaning to us for the exhibit, bought the second one, so now we have one, they have two and people will be able to continue to see it on our exhibit. When you have a film, they make more than one dress, in case it gets damaged they have it. But, we're thrilled with the results.

MP: In addition to your book, you also wrote the foreword for The Audrey Hepburn Treasures book, which is a huge collective of photographs and keepsakes from both your mother?s personal life and professional career. The book is really an original concept and the best of both worlds for your mother?s fans. How did that idea come about?

Sean: We had been approached in the past. There had been one done on John Lennon, one on Elvis and most recently one on Frank Sinatra. Of course, here I am saying there's all these biographies, we need another book on Audrey Hepburn like a hole in the head but this particular book has a wonderful way of telling its story. It's not the text, it's not the photographs, but it's the little mementos that are contained in these little envelopes, which by the nature and the quality of their printing and the reproduction, makes you really feel like you're able to sit in someone's drawing room and go through personal mementos and souvenirs and so forth. Interestingly enough, it's not so much what the letter says, but it's the combination we were talking about, what makes her who she is, it's a combination of all of these factors. When you look at the little note and you see the form of the letters and the handwriting, and the way she says the most simple thing, and the paper and the letterhead, suddenly you start to receive something in a new way that you haven't received before. You start to sort of learn from the subtext I should say, or reading in between the lines, information about the person that you learn at a sort of almost instinctive level. It's lovely, and of course again we gave the proceeds to the Fund and I agreed to do it because it was such a novel approach.

MP: Sean, what do you hope that people get out of your mother?s life and work?

Sean: Exactly what they have. I have no other hopes. It's extraordinary. The most warming thing is that children are starting to look at her films, in this sort of ADD society of rap music and whatever, somehow the DVD sales, we see it through that and through letters that we receive. The DVD sales numbers are going up by a respectable 7 to 10% every year, and it must mean that the new generation are somehow connecting with her. People who never knew her or watched her on television, they're connecting to her because of her performance, because of her tone and her choices and so what more could we wish for than that, that somehow she, like a wonderful, beautiful painting, which you didn't have to know Van Gogh to realize that what he did was extraordinary and that the paintings are worth more and more every year. What a wonderful company to be in with all the other sort of artistic, wonderful work that is left on our planet, that she be a part of that. Sort of a treasure as we called the book, she's becoming a treasure.

MP: I?ve been speaking with Sean Hepburn Ferrer, the son of the legendary Audrey Hepburn. For anyone interested in purchasing the book ?Audrey Hepburn ? An Elegant Spirit? or ?The Audrey Hepburn Treasures?, I?d like to suggest that they be purchased directly from the official website store, as the net profits go to the Audrey Hepburn Children?s Fund. Once again that website is www.audreyhepburn.com. Sean, thank you so much again for your time and for speaking with me today.

Sean: Well, thank you Gary. It's through your interest and your help that we continue to tell the story and are able to make a little difference and follow in her larger-than-life footsteps, or footprints I should say, with our tiny footsteps, and I thank you for that.

MP: Thank you.

I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to Sean Hepburn Ferrer for speaking with me. I'd also like to remind everyone again to visit the official website, www.audreyhepburn.com