33 Years Later, Audrey Hepburn’s Son Reveals Why She Was So Thin and Addresses Eating Disorder Rumors

Gina RagusaThu, August 13, 2026 at 3:52 PM UTC

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Audrey Hepburn’s famously tiny frame became one of her defining features, but her son says the reason behind her size has less to do with an eating disorder than with the trauma and starvation she endured as a teenager during World War II.

For decades, Hepburn’s slender figure prompted speculation that she suffered from an eating disorder. But in his biography of his mother, Intimate Audrey, Sean Hepburn Ferrer pushes back against those rumors, saying she ate what she liked, carefully managed her portions and remained highly active. Her relationship with food, however, had been forever altered years earlier, when the future actress nearly starved to death during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

“Despite decades of gossip that she had an eating disorder because she was so slim, she cooked and baked and ate what she liked but was careful with portions. She started most days with a boiled egg, toast, and jam. She walked every day, setting a punishing pace for those of us trailing behind,” Ferrer wrote, via People.

He continued, “For lunch, she’d have a salad or a soup, a sandwich, and a scoop of her favorite vanilla ice cream with maple syrup. She drank the occasional beer, and after her daily nap, she’d have a square of dark chocolate — her ‘cure for the blues’ —followed by a ‘finger’ of whisky when the sun set. Supper would be a single plate of pasta pomodoro and a salad.”

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Hepburn’s extreme thinness had roots in the deprivation she experienced during the 1944-45 “Hunger Winter” in Nazi-occupied Netherlands. As her younger son, Luca Dotti, wrote in Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II, she came dangerously close to death as food became increasingly scarce and people around her died from hunger. Her family was also forced to shelter for days or weeks at a time as bombing intensified, making an already desperate shortage of food even worse.

“By the end of the war, she was very close to death… She was almost 5’ 6” and weighed 88 lbs,” Dotti told People. “She had jaundice and edema. She suffered from anemia the rest of her life, possibly as a consequence.”

The experience left Hepburn severely malnourished at a critical stage of her development, and the effects followed her into adulthood. Her son Sean has previously explained that the lack of nutrition and training during the war also ended Hepburn’s dream of becoming a prima ballerina.

This story was originally published by Parade on Aug 13, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”