Audrey Hepburn's "sad" childhood has been revealed by the star herself in a previously unreleased interview that has now emerged. The Hollywood icon is the subject of a new documentary, "Audrey: More Than an Icon," which takes a closer look at her life through a series of rare interviews with friends and family as well as with Hepburn. In one of the interviews, she speaks of the "trauma" of her parents' divorce when she was six years old.
"It certainly stayed with me for the rest of my life. My father leaving us left me insecure, for life perhaps," she said, according to Daily Mail. "My mother explained very sweetly that he'd gone away on a trip and she didn't think he was coming back. I thought my mother was never going to stop crying."
Hepburn recalled her mother "sobbing" and trying to comfort her.
"I missed him terribly from the day he disappeared," she added of her father. "As a child you can't quite understand. That sense of helplessness ... the strangeness of it too. Not really understanding and just knowing daddy's gone away."
Hepburn said her father walking out on them was "one of the traumas that left a very deep mark on me."
In the documentary, Hepburn's granddaughter, Emma Kathleen Ferrer, said the star struggled to grow up without her dad.
"She really felt throughout her whole life the lack of her father and I know that's something she really struggled with," Emma said. "That wasn't really fixed through her relationships at all. There were many difficult times with the relationships she did have."
Hepburn is known for her tumultuous string of relationships. She married Mel Ferrer in 1954 but they split in 1968. Hepburn then married Andrea Dotti in 1969. The marriage lasted several years and after they divorced, Hepburn started a relationship with Robert Wolders. That lasted until her death in 1993 at age 63 from cancer.
"I think she got that in her life, but I don't think she got that from a lot of people," Emma said of love. "You know, for the woman who is most loved in the world to have such a lack of love is so sad."
While Hepburn struggled to find love, her death sent millions into mourning. In an interview with Fox News last year, her son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, recalled seeing over 25,000 people lining the streets of where they lived on the day of her funeral. His own grief came later.
"I remember [after she died] I opened up the old projector and hung a sheet in the attic and watched her films at night. That full realization came after she passed away," he said. "Not only did she represent inner and outer beauty and elegance, but all the work she did at the end of her life touched so many people. She created this extraordinary legacy."
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