Audrey Hepburn

As an international film star, Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) personified chic, cosmopolitan elegance, but she spent the last decades of her life traveling to the corners of the earth most afflicted by poverty, hunger and disease. Born in Belgium to a Dutch mother and a British father, she grew up in the Netherlands during the German occupation, and her memory of the hunger and deprivation of those years motivated her later efforts as a champion of the world's children. She received the Best Actress Oscar for her first appearance in an American film, Roman Holiday. After a dazzling career as the star of films such as Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair Lady, she traveled the world as Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund. In 1991, she addressed the Academy of Achievement at the United Nations, where she shared her views on the responsibility of service to the world's children.