Couples
Audrey Hepburn Found Lasting Love Before Her Death: Inside Her Marriages and Secret Affair
Audrey Hepburn played a love interest many times throughout her Hollywood career. In her life away from the big screen, the Breakfast at Tiffany’s actress was married two times and found lasting love before her death on January 20, 1993.
Who Was Audrey Hepburn’s Ex-Husband Mel Ferrer?
While Hepburn was working on the 1954 film Sabrina, she and costar William Holden engaged in a secret affair. Holden was married at the time to Brenda Marshall and was already a father of three.
“He also showed no signs of getting a divorce. For a woman who cared about being married to a decent guy and having children, it was a one-two punch,” Barry Paris, author of the biography Audrey Hepburn, said.
After her romance with Holden fizzled out, Hepburn married her first husband, Mel Ferrer, in 1954. They were first introduced at the 1953 premiere of the film Roman Holiday, in which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress. Before their nuptials, Hepburn and Ferrer starred together in the play Ondine, earning her a Tony Award for Best Actress.
The Funny Face star also shared the screen with Ferrer in the historical drama War and Peace in 1956. In 1960, they welcomed their first child together, son Sean Hepburn Ferrer. Eight years later, Hepburn and Ferrer split in 1968. The Broadway actor died of heart failure in June 2008 at age 90.
Who Was Audrey Hepburn’s Ex-Husband Andrea Dotti?
One year after her divorce from Ferrer, Hepburn married her second husband, Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti. The pair met aboard a mutual friend’s yacht. In February 1970, the couple welcomed a son named Luca Dotti. Hepburn and Dotti called it quits on their marriage in 1982. Dotti died in September 2007 at age 69.
Who Was Audrey Hepburn’s Partner Robert Wolders?
In 1980, Hepburn began dating Dutch actor Robert Wolders after meeting him at a party. They were together for 13 years up until Hepburn’s death at age 63 from cancer. As for why the stars never married, Wolders simply explained that they didn’t feel the need to have a wedding.
“I felt she had two unhappy marriages, it was wonderful the way it was,” he told People in August 2017. “When Audrey would be asked, she’d also say, ‘Why mess with a good thing?’ I remember her saying to one interviewer it’s more romantic this way because it’s not another piece of paper, but out of loyalty to each other that binds us together. Had we been younger and wanted to have children, it might have been different, but that’s just not the case.”
Before his death in July 2018 at age 81, Wolders briefly dated Gigi actress Leslie Caron and later dated Shirlee Fonda.
