A 7x5 colour candid photograph of Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993), signed with a blue sharpie. The picture was taken by a fan, at the hotel where she was staying whilst attending the premiere of Bloodline in 1979. This pencil-slim gamine with enormous brown eyes, short hair and naïve chic, brought a freshness to the cinema of the early 1950s that could not be ignored. It wasn’t that she was a brilliant actress or an irresistible personality, it was more that when the camera caught her face in close-up, everyone held their breath; she was so photogenic that the whole world fell in love with her.

Born Edda Hepburn-Ruston, in Brussels, daughter of the second marriage of Baroness Ella Van Heemstra to an English banker, she spent the war years in Holland before coming to England to study ballet. A job in the chorus line of a West End revue led to her signing with Associated British studios, and several small film parts.

Whilst filming in the south of France, a chance encounter with writer Colette led to her being whisked to Broadway to star in Gigi, the hit stage version of Colette’s novel. America adored her, and two years later her US film debut in Roman Holiday won her 1953’s Best Actress Oscar – and nearly every other prize going. Almost every movie she made during the next 14 years was a hit; she was as good in epics as she was in musicals or light romantic comedies, and picked up four more Oscar nominations.

In 1968, blaming her career for the failure of her marriage to actor Mel Ferrer, she returned to Europe, re-marrying the following year to a psychiatrist. For the next ten years Hepburn refused to work unless it was in Italy or Switzerland, but was eventually persuaded to make Robin and Marian, and a few other cameo appearances.

The latter years of her life were devoted to charity work, and she became a special ambassador for UNICEF. Her untiring work in this capacity, much of it in the field, had begun earning her worldwide admiration anew when she succumbed to colon cancer at age 63.