Melissa Hellstern - How to Be Lovely: The Audrey Hepburn Way of Life

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Table of Contents

For the two best teachers a girl could ask for
my grandmothers

Introduction

When it comes to elegance and style, few women surpass Audrey Hepburn. She has become an adjectiveso Audreydescribing some ethereal combination of grace, elegance, charm, and wisdom.

While her clothing style remains a grounding influence on fashion, it is her character that is certain to withstand the test of time. Audrey taught us that being a woman is as simple as knowing who you are, and who you are not.

And somehow we suspected that if anyone would have the right answers, it would be her: Amazing the questions they will ask characters like us ... the questionsall the way from what do I think of love or how does it feel to be a star, to enormous ones, even political, with as many prongs as a pitchfork. Here I am, an innocent little actress trying to do a job, and it seems that my opinion on policy in the Middle East is worth something. I dont say I dont have an opinion, but I doubt its worth.

To the world, she represented all that a woman could be, and we wanted in. We still do. By looking at her words from interviews over the years, we may just find a new revelation or two, and certainly some we knew all along.

May the light she shared with the world shine on in the lives of those of us she continues to inspire.

My life isnt theories and formulae.
Its part instinct, part common sense.
Logic is as good a word as any, and Ive absorbed what logic
I have from everything and everyone ... from my mother, from
training as a ballet dancer, from Vogue magazine,
from the laws of life and health and nature.

Audrey Hepburn

How to Find Your Bliss

one

Happiness

The most important thing is to
enjoy your lifeto be happy
thats all that matters.

A happy life has been pursued in every culture, in every country, in every generation. But after all this time, there are still no rules for how to get it. And the more you try to pin it down, the more elusive it seems.

By now, we surely know that money cant buy it. There are those who have very little and are very happy. And others who seem to have it all, but are not.

Still, we all look for the next reason to be happy. What if it is not about what happens to us, what we own or where we live, but how we look at it? Maybe those rose-colored glasses arent such a bad idea after all.

I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish Id invented it, because it is very true.

Attitude Is Everything

Once upon a time, Audrey Hepburn was just a girl.

A girl who took ballet and dreamed of becoming the next Anna Pavlova. Who climbed trees with her brothers. Who read books in her room. Who often felt unsure in the world, but learned to get along. A girl who loved to be loved, just like the rest of us.

As she grew, there were the usual hardships we all find somewhere along the way. Disappointment. Frustration. Struggle. A dwindling bank balance. And some most of us can hardly fathomovernight success, fame, miscarriages, studio execs, while the whole world watched.

Regardless of what life threw her way, Audrey was a person who sparkled. She never failed to remember what we too often forgetthat life itself is a glorious opportunity.

What She Said

Pick the day. Enjoy itto the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come.... The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the presentand I dont want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

Not to live for the day, that would be materialisticbut to treasure the day. I realize that most of us live on the skin-on the surface-without appreciating just how wonderful it is simply to be alive at all.

My own life has been much more than a fairy tale. Ive had my share of difficult moments, but whatever difficulties Ive gone through, Ive always gotten a prize at the end.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadnesses, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between man and the life he lives?

Albert Camus

Listen to Your Mother

Audreys mother, born Baroness Ella van Heemstra, grew up wanting more than anything else to be English, slim, and an actress, but her aristocratic heritage prevented such foolishness. Marriage and motherhood were on her agenda.

The Baroness, as she preferred to be called, did marry. She also divorced because, as her friend so aptly put it, she preferred that to taking a lover, like most. Divorce was hardly commonplace, yet she stood tall as the single mother of two boys, Alexander and Ian.

Just a year later, she married Joseph Hepburn-Ruston. Together, they brought Audrey into the world. But it would be up to her mother to help her navigate through it.

I could always hear my mothers voice saying, Be on time, and Remember to think of others first, and Dont talk a lot about yourself. You are not interesting. Its the others that matter.

What She Said

Being the daughter of a baroness doesnt make you any different, except that my mother was born in 1900 and had had herself a very strict, Victorian upbringing, if you like. So, she was very demanding of usof me and my brothers. Manners, as she would say, dont forget, are kindnesses. You must always be kind. Opening the door for old ladies is just a routine so that you know shes helped. And she was always very adamant about that.

My mother taught me to stand straight, sit erect, use discipline with wine and sweets and to smoke only six cigarettes a day.

I was given an outlook on life by my mother.... It was frowned upon not to think of others first. It was frowned upon not to be disciplined.

Its that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so dont fuss, dear; get on with it.

As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself.... All of which Ive earned a living doing.

I can really take no credit for any talent that Audrey may have. If its real talent, its God-given. I might as well be proud of a blue sky, or the paintings in the Flemish exhibition at the Royal Academy.

her mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston

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