ON AUDREY HEPBURN

An “opinionated” biography focused on Hepburn’s fame as a fashion icon and movie star.

Cohan, a lifelong fan, argues that Hepburn was more than just a charming, lovely presence in her films and earned her fame through her acting skills and eye for fashion. Generally scanting Hepburn’s personal life, he spends most of his time looking specifically at each of her movies, from the well-known to the less-appreciated work from her final years as an actor, also paying attention to her collaboration with Herbert Givenchy, whose clothes helped establish her reputation as a fashion icon. Hepburn’s movies from the 1950s and ’60s, which Cohan dubs “the Audrey films,” include Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Funny Face, and Roman Holiday; in these, arguably her most popular movies, she played a Cinderella-like role close to her actual personality, but they are not the sole focus of Cohan’s analysis. He spends equal time discussing her thrillers, including the acclaimed Wait Until Dark, and the dramatic roles she took in films such as The Nun’s Story and The Children’s Hour. Detailed summaries unpack these movies and others, drawing comparisons between them and showing Hepburn’s growth across the different eras of her career. Even when her characters were mere extensions of her own persona, Cohan argues that her keen timing and expressive movement on screen evidence her skill as an actor. Though his analyses are often bogged down by dense passages of summary, he does add a fresh perspective on Hepburn’s acting, arguing that it “now speaks to those contemporary viewers like me, who understand the artifice of genders, how ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ are neither monolithic nor organic but are cultural constructs and performances.”

A densely detailed guide, especially suitable for fans of Hepburn’s movies.