Audrey Hepburn once said, “I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.” The Academy-Award-winning actress will certainly be on our minds next week when her storied film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, celebrates its 55th anniversary. The legendary ode to New York helped secure Hepburn's position as a veritable style star—and the look has continued to be replicated, emulated, and celebrated ever since. “My look is attainable,” Hepburn told Barbara Walters in 1989. “Women can look like Audrey Hepburn by flipping out their hair, buying the large glasses, and the little sleeveless dresses.” In honor of her contributions to fashion and film, here are five things you may not have known about Hollywood’s most famous Tiffany & Co. customer.
1. Audrey Hepburn was discovered at age 22 on the French Riviera by Colette, the renowned author who penned the 1944 novella Gigi. At the time, Hepburn had a small part in the film, Nous irons à Monte-Carlo. During production, she was spotted across a hotel lobby and was immediately pegged for the lead in the upcoming Broadway musical adaption. “I’d only said a few lines in my whole acting career,” Hepburn later recalled. Upon first sight, Colette reportedly whispered, “Voilà, c’est Gigi.”
2. Roman Holiday costar Gregory Peck insisted that Hepburn receive the same top billing on the film, a project that she was almost overlooked for entirely. Producers initially imagined Elizabeth Taylor in the role. But the director, William Wyler, was so impressed by Hepburn’s screen test that he opted to cast the relatively unknown actress in the lead instead. As part of Peck’s contract, the film was originally set to feature his name above the title, with “Introducing Audrey Hepburn” to follow beneath in smaller font. Soon after filming began, Peck made a phone call to his agent and requested otherwise. “The real star of the picture is Audrey Hepburn,” Peck said. “We all knew that this was going to be an important star and we began to talk off-camera about the chance that she might win an Academy Award in her first film.” (She did in 1954.) The moment was also in part thanks to her legendary screen test. When the actress performed a scene from the film, the cameraman were told to keep things rolling after the director said, “Cut.” Several minutes of unscripted Hepburn was captured on film and the end result won her the part. “She was absolutely delightful," Wyler said when he saw the test. “Acting, looks, and personality.”
3. Hepburn first suggested Hubert de Givenchy to design the costumes for Sabrina. While Edith Head was originally enlisted for the position, and would ultimately take credit, the film’s director, Billy Wilder, said the change of plans came from the leading lady. The actress expressed her adoration for fashion on the set of Sabrina. “Clothes are positively a passion with me,” she told a reporter. “I love them to the point where it is practically a vice.” Fortunately, Paramount allowed Hepburn to incorporate the costumes into her own closet, a habit she kept throughout her collaboration with Givenchy for the remainder of her career, including Funny Face (1957), Love in the Afternoon (1957), and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). “Givenchy gave me a look, a kind, a silhouette,” she once said. “He kept the spare style that I love. What is more beautiful than a simple sheath made an extraordinary way in a special fabric and just two earrings?”
4. Truman Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Holly Golightly in the film adaption of his 1958 novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. “Paramount double-crossed me in every way and cast Audrey,” the author has said. “It was the most miscast film I’ve ever seen.” Monroe passed on the role, reportedly, because it was bad for her image. “Marilyn Monroe will not play a lady of the evening,” her acting coach, Paula Strasberg, said. Hepburn also had her own misgivings. “I hesitated a long time before accepting the part,” she said prior to the film’s release. “It’s very difficult and I didn’t think I was right for it. I have to operate entirely on instinct. It was Blake Edwards who finally [persuaded] me. He at least is perfect cast as a director and I discovered his approach emphasized the same sport of spontaneity as my own.” The actress added: “I should be a stylish Holly Golightly, even if that’s all I can contribute.”
5. Hepburn has said the Breakfast at Tiffany’s scene where she dispels her tabby, named Cat, out of the cab into the rainy streets of New York is the most distasteful thing she has ever done on film. Hepburn famously owned a Yorkshire terrier, fittingly named Mr. Famous, (see his cameo in Funny Face in the dog basket during the train shot with Anna Karenina) and spent part of her first Hollywood paycheck on a diamante collar for her beloved friend. She also adopted a baby deer she dubbed "Ip" (short for Pippin) after on the set of her 1959 film Green Mansions. The animal trainer suggested Hepburn take the fawn home so that it would follow her on-screen. After her turn in Tiffany’s, animal-rescue leagues and pet stores everywhere reported an unprecedented demand for orange cats.