She often played innocent, childlike characters. Slender and doe-eyed, she set a different style from the more ample women stars of the 1950s. After playing minor parts in British films in the early 1950s, she became a Hollywood star in Roman Holiday 1951, for which she won an Academy Award, and later starred in such films as Funny Face 1957, My Fair Lady 1964, and Wait Until Dark 1968. Among her later films were Robin and Marian 1976. Born in Brussels to an English banker and a Dutch baroness, she was trapped in Arnhem with her mother when World War II began, and spent the war years there in hardship, though managing to train as a dancer. She subsequently appeared in revues in London's West End, plus small roles in several British films. Her break came when the novelist Colette insisted she play in the Broadway version of her novel Gigi. This led to her casting in Roman Holiday and to a succession of films during the 1950s and 1960s: mainly comedies, such as Sabrina 1954 and Charade 1963, but she also played Natasha in War and Peace 1956 and the doubting novice in The Nun's Story 1959. She turned down the title role in The Diary of Anne Frank 1959, saying that her memories of the Dutch occupation would have made it too painful. One of her most celebrated roles was the anarchic Holly Golightly in the bittersweet Breakfast at Tiffany's 1961. Her casting as Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady caused some controversy; many had expected the part to be played by Julie Andrews, who had created it on the stage. Latterly she was active in a new career as special ambassador for the United Nations, and visited Somalia in the autumn of 1992. She was married twice; to the actor-director Mel Ferrer and to Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti.
