Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (45 page)

Audrey
loved the fact that the movie promoted an enduring romance, and one that was
shown as lusty even in middle age. If she wanted to prove something to Dotti,
it was that she was still desirable just as she was, looking her age at
forty-six, not hiding from it.

But
she never expected to look quite so much her age. Filming outside of Pamplona
in the summer of 1975 proved more arduous than any of her previous shoots,
including
The Nun’s Story
. Spain was
enduring record heat waves that, added to Audrey’s severe case of dysentery,
turned her into a dehydrated bag of nerves.

“We
arranged the shooting to accommodate her younger son’s school holidays,”
said director Richard Lester, “which was very important to her, because
she was concerned that she spend as much time with him as possible.

“She
had been accustomed to being dressed by Givenchy, and she had just one costume
in this picture, made out of a thick burlap material, so it must have been a
terrible shock to her to think, after eight years away from the screen, `Is
this what the world of film has come to?‘ Yet she took it with immense good
grace.

“I
had been away from movies for a long, long time,” she recalled, “and
I was plenty nervous. Lester was always in a big hurry. I never remember doing
more than two takes on anything. He didn’t pussyfoot around, nor did he coddle
his stars. I missed the strokes, but I kept going without them.”

And
it paid off. “The moment she appears on the screen is startling,”
wrote
Time
magazine, “not for
her thorough, gentle command, not even for her beauty, which seems heightened,
renewed. It is rather that we are reminded how long it has been since an
actress has so beguiled us and captured our imagination. Hepburn is unique and,
now, almost alone.”

Chapter 25

David
Niven was right: At least for a little while, Audrey’s return to the glamour of
the screen inspired jealousy in Dotti and rekindled the flame of her marriage.

Dotti
detested the idea she’d become a full-time actress again, so her foray back in
Robin and Marian was enough to keep him
on his toes. Like Ferrer, he was slightly resentful of his wife’s celebrity.
But at least Dotti was never in competition with her. He just wanted to make
sure she’d be at home when he needed her. Whenever that was.

In
a nutshell, Audrey felt manipulated. When Dotti wanted a wife—for a social
function, say, or when someone in the family celebrated a christening or a
wedding—Audrey was expected to be dutifully by his side. But when he decided
to carouse on the town without her (and she never wanted to go clubbing),
Audrey was expected to make herself scarce.

Since
the boys were both thriving and busy with school, she decided to spend more
time considering the many scripts she was still being sent. One day during the
summer of 1976 in the living room of the penthouse apartment near Ponte
Vittorio, she answered the phone expecting to hear from her agent, Kurt Frings.

Instead
her worst fears were confirmed. Kidnappers were on the line, threatening both
Sean and Luca. Italy’s Red Brigades were at the height of their terror
campaign, and Audrey had often obsessed about the possibility of kidnapping.
This single call was all she needed to forge ahead with her own plan: Sean and
Luca were spirited away to Leonardo da Vinci Airport that afternoon, and by
nightfall they were safely ensconced at La Paisible.

“I
was determined to protect my children from harm,” Audrey said. “There
was no question about that. I guess that scare gave me strength, or at least
reminded me that I was still strong, no matter how depressed I was over my
marriage or my career. You sometimes need to be tested in order to show your
true grit. Before that voice on the phone threatened the people I held most
dear, I didn’t know I had it in me to make a decision about anything. After
that, it was easy. I had the energy to defend my boys.”

Audrey
enrolled them in Le Rosey, an exclusive Swiss boarding school that catered to
the children of industrialists and film stars, and they made an immediate and
healthy adjustment.

Her
husband, however, was not so lucky. While she was with the boys in Switzerland,
Dotti was nearly abducted in broad daylight outside of his clinic in Rome. Four
gun-toting kidnappers attempted to shove Dotti into their blue Mercedes getaway
car. He resisted. They knocked him down to the pavement with the butt of their
guns. He began bleeding profusely, but he screamed so loudly that two policemen
began to chase the kidnappers. They got away, but without Dotti.

“I
was paralyzed by the kidnapping attempt,” Audrey said. “I lived with
irrational fears anyway, so when something real happened to someone close to
me, I fell apart. If our marriage had a slight chance before that incident, it
was doomed afterward. I was too afraid to come to Rome much. Andrea was too
brave, too resilient to be cowed by terrorism, but that scared me, too. I
wanted a husband to share the daily things with. But he felt he had to stay in
Rome no matter what, and I couldn’t go there no matter what.”