Late actress Audrey Hepburn weighed only 88 pounds and suffered several ailments as a teenager during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, according to a biography written by her son.
Luca Dotti, the son of Hepburn and Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, wrote "
Audrey at Home, Memories of Mother's Kitchen," which was published by HarperCollins.
"Mom carried the war with her for her entire life," Dotti wrote in what he calls a "kitchen table biography,"
according to the Daily Mail.
World War II broke out while Hepburn was in a London private school where the future Academy Award winner was training to become a classical ballerina. She moved to the Netherlands when bombing began in England.
"She came away from those early years with a passion for good food, family, home and garden – as well as being burdened with delicate health," wrote Caroline Howe of the Daily Mail.
"Her diet consisted mostly of endive, a leafy, crisp green vegetable, digging up and eating tulip bulbs and drinking enough water to feel full. Surviving the German occupation, at 16 she weighed 88 pounds and suffered from asthma, jaundice, acute anemia and a serious form of edema," said Howe.
Dotti wrote that malnutrition during the war from when she was nine until she was 16 was the reason why she remained slender through her adult life,
according to People magazine.
"The time she most needed nourishment, she didn't have enough food," wrote Dotti. "When the Nazis locked down Holland in 1944, they called it the Winter of Hunger and my mom didn't have enough to eat; almost to the point of her body failing."
HarperCollins said the biography reveals 50 of the star's recipes meant to reflect different times of Hepburn's life, along with recollections, anecdotes and excerpts from her personal correspondence and drawings.
Hepburn died in 1993.
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