When in Rome...
With Roman Holiday, which earned her the 1953 best-actress Oscar, Audrey Hepburn became not just a major Hollywood star but also a living icon for the Eternal City. Luca Dotti recalls his mother's three-decade love affair with the Italian capital. "A short time ago, while letting me off by my doorstep in Rome, a taxi driver said to me, "I know this place. Years ago I used to bring a beautiful woman here." That woman was my mother, Audrey Hepburn, but with the strange grace Romans can so unexpectedly display, he refrained from naming her. During the nearly 20 years in which Mother lived here, many people in Rome knew her the way that taxi driver did: as a woman who was fond of taking her children to school and of going on long walks with her dogs. Sometimes these private moments were captured when a photographer happened upon her as she stood on a side street near Campo de' Fiori with her husband, waiting for her mother-in-law to buzz them in for Sunday lunch. Her life wasn't always like this-quite the opposite. My mother's fame began with her role in Roman Holiday (1953). With that film, my mother became almost a second Colosseum: an icon of the city. In 1955 she came to Rome again to film the colossal War and Peace at Cinecitta'. When she stepped off the airplane at Ciampino Airport, she was welcomed as a foreign star (at the time mistaken for an American), but by then she was Roman by adoption. These were the years of Rome as "Hollywood on the Tiber," when the city was transformed into a giant film set. The major film companies sent their stars to Rome.The Italians didn't just stand there looking. With investments from producers such as Carlo Ponti and Dino De Laurentiis, Italian cinema proved itself capable of giving lessons and collecting awards, even from America's Hollywood. In this environment, my mother began filming The Nun's Story (1959) with director Fred Zinnemann. She confided to friends that she felt that this role was deeply hers-closer to the personal aspirations that would later lead her back to Africa as a UNICEF ambassador. She began to spend more time in Rome both on set and off, and her image evolved to include characteristics of the Roman spirit. At the time of her marriage to my father and my birth, in 1970, my mother's public life as an actress and the days of paparazzi photographs came to an end, by her choice. She slowly withdrew from the spotlight, and her priorities began to change. And Rome made it possible. Perhaps in part because of its indolence, Rome always protected my mother, giving her time and space. I believe she still holds the record for magazine covers-she appeared on 650 of them. Without a doubt, this exposure meant a great deal of fame and a lot of glamour, but shooting that many magazine covers also meant she spent a total of nearly two years of her life doing only that. At a certain point, she decided she wanted to do something else. She made that decision not once but twice: first to be a full-time mother, then to be a UNICEF goodwill ambassador."
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