legacy of LOVE

“Intimate Audrey,” the revealing exhibition about the actress and humanitarian’s multifaceted life, is a gift from her son Sean Hepburn Ferrer.

- AUDREY CAPRIO

Sean Hepburn Ferrer had a game he played with his young kids whenever they arrived at a place, be it an airport or train station. Who can find Grandma Audrey within three minutes? The kids never lose because Audrey Hepburn—her image, her influence, and all that she inspires—is everywhere.

On a Zoom call with Hepburn Ferrer from his home in the Tuscan countryside, the reference is immediate—it’s me, hi. I tell Sean that I was named after the screen legend, a fact that doesn’t surprise him at all. His mother remains beloved the world over.

Hepburn Ferrer, a film producer and philanthropist, has brought his exhibition “Intimate Audrey” to Manila, where it is on view at S Maison of the Conrad Hotel until September. It’s a show he lovingly put together in honor of his mother’s 90th birthday on May 4, 2019, and one that delves a little deeper into the life of the actress and humanitarian, one who guarded her privacy and treasured her family life so much that she lived outside of Hollywood in Switzerland and gave up acting to focus on raising her two sons.

With hundreds of unpublished family photos, letters, speeches, and film clips that Hepburn carefully collected and Sean kept over the years, “Intimate Audrey” is a more personal curation of artifacts than “Timeless Audrey,” Sean’s previous exhibition that had also toured around the world. “I realized that ‘Timeless Audrey’ was very memorabilia-top heavy on dresses and evening gowns, and you’re not going to find Audrey Hepburn in a pair of ballet shoes. You may look and look and think it’s lovely. But in the end, I wanted to get people closer to the essence of who she was,” Sean says. “And I think this is the best exhibition so far.”