New details have emerged about Audrey Hepburn's teenage role as a spy for the Dutch resistance during World War Two, as explored in the BBC Radio 4 podcast History's Youngest Heroes. The Oscar-winning actress, known for her iconic film roles in the 1950s and '60s, carried messages for the resistance and staged secret ballet performances to raise funds while living under Nazi occupation in the Netherlands.
Hepburn was born in Brussels in 1929 to a Dutch baroness, Ella van Heemstra, and a British-Austrian businessman, Joseph Hepburn-Ruston. Her mother, initially an admirer of Adolf Hitler, moved Audrey to the Netherlands in 1939, believing Hitler would not invade. However, the Nazis invaded in May 1940, and the family suffered severe food shortages as resources were diverted to the German war effort.
According to Robert Matzen, author of Dutch Girl, Hepburn's uncle, Count Otto van Limburg Stirum, was executed by the Nazis in 1942 for his anti-Nazi stance, an event that deeply affected her. At 15, she refused to join the Nazi Kulturkammer artists' union, choosing instead to give up public dance performances. She continued dancing in secret, performing in safe houses with closed blinds and only candlelight to avoid detection.
Hepburn's son, Luca Dotti, described how dance allowed his mother to escape reality during the war. The podcast episode highlights how these experiences shaped her later life and career, revealing a lesser-known chapter of her youth marked by courage and resistance.
