There are so many iconic images of legendary actress Audrey Hepburn: sitting on her New York balcony, strumming the guitar as she croons “Moon River” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, riding her Vespa through the streets of Rome in Roman Holiday, dancing through Paris with Fred Astaire in Funny Face.

Born in Ixelles, Belgium, Audrey Kathleen Ruston, as she was known, grew up in the throes of World War II, in desperate poverty and the product of a broken home. Her love of dance became her escape and eventually, a calling card to a career in London, after the war. Beginning in the chorus of several West End Musicals, she eventually landed a few minor roles in on film, before securing the coveted title character in the Broadway show Gigi, chosen by none other than the author herself, Colette.

That acclaim led to her casting in Roman Holiday, opposite Gregory Peck, netting her not only an Oscar for her film debut, but establishing Hepburn as one of the preeminent talents of Hollywood’s Golden Era. The documentary Audrey, directed by Helena Coan, takes the audience behind the lens to meet a complicated and damaged woman, who eventually prioritized the personal over the professional, finding true happiness in helping others. She spoke to Scott Orlin.

What made Audrey Hepburn’s life so compelling that you wanted to make a documentary on her?

I think she’s someone that filmmakers have actually kind of shied away from before because she doesn’t have that kind of tragic heroine story of someone like Marilyn Monroe or Hedy Lamarr. It felt like a real challenge to actually tell her story and really use the idea of love and the pursuit of love as the motivation to her story. I’ve also, since I was quite young, I have been aware of her. I’m only 26 so I have never shared the earth with her unfortunately, but I was aware of her growing up. And then as I got into my 20s and older, I really felt that she had become very mythologized and she had become a bit of a 2D icon, and you would see her on canvases and tote bags but no one actually really knew who she was. I wanted to find out, so that is why I made the film.

How much of her private/family archives did you access?

I wouldn’t have made the film if we didn’t have access to that. And Sean, Audrey’s son is interviewed in the film, but he was also part of introducing us to people. Some of the home movie archive that is in the film, when Audrey is with her husband at the time Mel Ferrer, that was shot by Gary Cooper’s ex-wife Maria Cooper. She gave us access to that. Apart from that group, no one had ever seen that footage before. Sean gave us some home movie footage that Mel Ferrer had recorded and some amazing photos as well. It was so important to have that because we couldn’t tell the story of who she really was without that kind of unseen footage. Another really important thing in the film that I discovered is a two or three-hour long interview with her, with a journalist called Glen Plaskin who recorded her towards the end of her life. I just emailed a ton of journalists that I knew had written about her and I said did you happen to record her? And one person got back to me and it was him and he recorded it and he sent me this tape that no one had ever heard. I just sat with my headphones and listened to her speak and it was amazing. I felt very, very close to her. She talked about everything from her time in the war to her father, her insecurities, her divorces, her humanitarian work, her children, her miscarriages and that changed the game for the film.

Did Sean set up boundaries for your discussions?

He never kind of officially set boundaries. I think we all went into this project knowing that it was going to be respectful of her. I make documentaries and fiction films and my aim either way is to try and find the truth, whatever that is to me and I always said that to Sean. He read a really long treatment that we wrote, and he could see that I was a young woman in the film industry trying to explore this icon and this, she’s larger than life now. I think he saw my intention and we chatted about it, we spoke about what I wanted to do, he believed in it and he trusted us and that meant more to me than anything really, not just to have his trust, but his daughter Emma, who is also in the film. For them to trust me, it was huge.

How much of a trailblazer was Audrey?

I would describe her as evolutionary rather than revolutionary. She was someone who took small steps. She wasn’t someone like Katharine Hepburn, they are such different characters, Audrey had more quietness to her and she would change things in a slight way, whether it was having short hair or the fact that she wasn’t a blonde bombshell, she wasn’t this buxom blonde beauty. I guess that was revolutionary, actually. Also her humanitarian work, I think that was revolutionary. For the first time, you saw those two worlds collide, the glamour of Hollywood and the real suffering that people were experiencing around the world. The closest person to her is Princess Diana in the sense that she didn’t just go and take photos with children, she sat with them, she kissed them, she cuddled the children. Because she knew what that meant, and I was very, very aware when I was making this film, I didn’t want to perpetuate any kind of white savior story. But I really think Audrey understood what it meant to starve, she was in the war, she was in Arnum, which was awfully, awfully affected by starvation. She knew what it meant to starve and to be hungry. I think that was revolutionary that an actress came from such an awful background and turned it into this just giving and just loving and making people aware of the horrors that were going on in the world. And if she were still here today, her family believes she would be on the front line fighting for the causes she believed in fighting for, fighting for children, fighting for mothers all across the world. So yeah, I think in that sense she was revolutionary.

As recognized as she was for her acting talent, she became a true fashion icon of the 20^th Century.

Yeah totally. I think that is something she totally revolutionized. She was and still is, a people’s fashion icon. I hear interviews with people like Lady Gaga or Kim Kardashian or whoever, saying that Audrey is their icon in terms of fashion. And I think she just totally understood fashion, she understood what the camera saw and what it didn’t. I think another misconception is that she was Givenchy’s muse, and she just kind of did what he suggested. She collaborated with him; in the film we have sketches she drew that have never been seen before. She would design her own clothes and they would argue about stuff and she was again, very powerful in that world. She didn’t just take designs, wear them and look pretty, it was a whole process that was really important to her. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her being remembered as this fashion icon, I just hope as well this film just kind of shows people all the other sides of her and how kind of multifaceted she was as a person.