11 Audrey Hepburn Films to Watch Now

Over a period of two decades—in the prim ’50s and the looser ’60s—every stylish film in Hollywood seemed to star Audrey Hepburn. And who could blame those directors and producers? The Brussels-born actor always had it: a magnetic charm, a dancer’s grace, the ability to make even the simplest ensemble look painfully chic.

It’s why our collective obsession with her has never really faded—and it’s set to deepen once again, with the imminent arrival of not one but two new Audrey Hepburn biopics. There’s Lily Collins’s take on the actor, in a yet-to-be-titled drama set during the production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Dinner With Audrey, in which the friendship between Thomasin McKenzie’s Hepburn and Ansel Elgort’s Hubert de Givenchy is center stage.

Ahead of them both, we present the 11 Hepburn movies that are essential viewing for a full understanding of the star’s oeuvre, from the early classics to the later, lesser-seen gems.

After four years of minor roles across screens big and small, Hepburn’s breakthrough came at the age of 24, as the angelic Princess Ann opposite Gregory Peck’s jaded journalist Joe Bradley in William Wyler’s glorious love letter to the Eternal City. With her gamine crop, neckerchief, full skirt, and lace-up flat sandals, riding a Vespa over cobblestones and enjoying ice cream on the Spanish Steps, Ann remains the poster girl for European summer style, and earned Hepburn a best-actress Oscar for her efforts. An unknown ingénue to Hollywood fixture in one fell swoop.

In a makeover that mirrored Hepburn’s own, Sabrina Fairchild, the naive chauffeur’s daughter, moves from Long Island to Paris, and returns a Givenchy-clad sophisticate in Billy Wilder’s juicy romp. Will she choose smarmy playboy David Larrabee (William Holden) or his more subdued older brother, Linus (Humphrey Bogart)? Literally who cares, when she looks this good in boatneck cocktail dresses, wasp-waisted jackets, and floor-skimming chiffon ballgowns? If anyone still doubted the actor’s style icon status, this solidified it.

As the tragic Natasha Rostova in King Vidor’s take on Tolstoy, Hepburn is as enchanting as ever, pirouetting in glittering, empire-waisted confections with Prince Andrei Bolkonsky (Hepburn’s new real-life husband, Mel Ferrer) before being seduced by Anatole Kuragin (Vittorio Gassman) and eventually ending up with Henry Fonda’s Count Pierre Bezukhov. Despite being best known for her contemporary roles, she proved she could slip into the 19th century with equal ease, resplendent in sumptuous velvet frocks and ruffled bonnets.

The fashion lover’s favourite Hepburn film, Stanley Donen’s zippy musical continues the plain-Jane-to-Parisian-knockout motif with Jo Stockton, the hard-nosed Greenwich Village bookseller who becomes an unlikely model of the season’s latest collections courtesy of an eccentric magazine editor (Kay Thompson) and hotshot photographer (Fred Astaire). The 30-year age gap between Hepburn and the latter, her love interest, is highly questionable; the incredible carousel of looks she sports—LBDs, sculptural hats, a wispy dream of a wedding dress—is divine.

A reunion with Billy Wilder, this twisty rom-com matches Hepburn’s young Ariane Chavasse, the Parisian daughter of a private detective (Maurice Chevalier), with Gary Cooper’s Frank Flannagan, a womanizing tycoon who brings her father a great deal of business. The pairing is improbable at best, but it’s worth watching for Hepburn’s charming innocence and rotation of Givenchy showstoppers.

Everyone remembers the black column gown, pearls, and shades she wore to sip coffee on Fifth Avenue, but Blake Edwards’s misty-eyed tragicomedy is, in fact, crammed full of unforgettable looks: that tangerine coat, the hot pink embellished cocktail dress, the giant hat, the classic trench coat, a sweatshirt and jeans for crooning “Moon River” on her fire escape, and even the oversized button-down she sleeps in. Good-time gal Holly Golightly is the character Hepburn will always be synonymous with, and with her deadpan comedy, simmering sadness, and startling combination of steeliness and vulnerability, it might just be the performance of her career.

Excellent outerwear is also a feature of Stanley Donen’s Hitchcockian screwball: the mustard-colored coat worn with black leather gloves, the red wool one paired with a leopard-print hat, an après-ski look to die for (recently recreated by Lily Collins on Emily in Paris). Alongside Cary Grant’s slippery US Treasury agent, Hepburn is a madcap delight—sharp, funny, and surprisingly resourceful—as a recent widow on the run from a trio of dangerous criminals.

Another match-up with William Holden—a one-time lover of Hepburn’s who became a lifelong friend—Richard Quine’s bonkers comedy about a procrastinating screenwriter and his no-nonsense typist is basically an excuse to dash about the City of Light in pistachio-hued skirt suits, neat pink frocks, and sun hats. Bonus points for the story-within-the-story, which requires even more outlandish costuming.

The ultimate in Hepburn’s makeover movies, George Cukor’s reimagining of Pygmalion, with Rex Harrison as the short-tempered Professor Henry Higgins to our leading lady’s plucky Eliza Doolittle, is a bonafide classic. The songs are sweeping and the production staggeringly impressive, but the star of the show is, undoubtedly, Cecil Beaton’s extravagant, Oscar-winning costuming. From her monochrome finery at Ascot to that bejeweled white ballgown and her sugary pink ruffles, this is Edwardian-era grandeur through the Day-Glo prism of the Swinging Sixties.

A rare romance with a man her own age (Breakfast at Tiffany’s with George Peppard is the other outlier on this list), William Wyler’s zany heist movie sees Hepburn’s wily Nicole Bonnet team up with Peter O’Toole’s Simon Dermott, a thief she enlists for a high-stakes scheme. Naturally, Givenchy provided the thrillingly quirky costumes: Space Age sunglasses, retina-searing skirt suits, lace-embroidered veils, and a polka-dotted granny nightie.

This is a deep cut with a killer wardrobe—one that, for once, isn’t crafted by Givenchy: think Mary Quant minidresses, Burberry trenches, Louis Vuitton luggage, and a jaw-dropping Paco Rabanne disc dress with matching earrings. The tale of a couple (Hepburn and Albert Finney) reflecting on the soaring highs and crushing lows of their 12-year marriage, it’s a Stanley Donen-directed treat, which shows even more of Hepburn’s range and emotional depth.