'My mother Audrey Hepburn took an overdose in despair at her cheating husband': Breakfast at Tiffany's star's son reveals her private torment in no-holds-barred memoir

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Arriving home from one of her trips abroad, my mother Audrey Hepburn noticed that her devoted housekeeper seemed upset. She asked Giovanna into her bedroom, and they both sat on the bed.

'I can't, I can't live with this any more,' said Giovanna. 'He brings them here when you are away, signora. He brings them to this bed... for the night, signora. He has us serve them breakfast – in bed, in this bed...'

Audrey turned pale and sat very still. Her only question was: when?

'Always, signora. Every time you go!' sobbed Giovanna.

Quietly, Audrey stood up, walked over to her bedroom window, then lit a cigarette. But her hand was shaking.

'Grazie, Giovanna. You did the right thing,' was all she said.

From then on, my mother's second marriage became a nightmare – a nightmare from which she felt she couldn't escape…

Most people, and women especially, imagine Audrey Hepburn as a woman in control of her own life, a star who stood apart from the rest. But when it came to romance, she was as vulnerable as she often appeared on screen.

Audrey Hepburn poses for the film 'Funny Face' in Los Angeles in 1957

Audrey Hepburn with her husband Mel Ferrer and son Sean

Incredibly, the woman acclaimed to this day for her beauty and style even convinced herself for a long time that she was too ugly to find a husband. And even when she did fall in love and marry, she lived in constant fear of being left.

She'd been born in 1929 to a Dutch mother and Anglo-Irish father, but they'd separated when she was six. The day that 46-year-old Joseph Ruston walked out on his wife and young daughter, abandoning them for good, was seared into Audrey's memory.

His absence made her insecure for life, shaping almost every decision she made, especially when it came to men. There would be moments of happiness with lovers, but they never seemed to last.

She often described her father's early rejection as the 'most traumatic event' of her entire life. 'One day, he just went out and never came back,' she said.

'I was destroyed. I cried for days and days.

'I'm not afraid to say that something of that feeling stayed with me through my own relationships. When I fell in love and married, I lived in constant fear of being left. I was terrified that something would take [my husband] away from me.'

For years, she saw her father as a heroic, almost mythical figure. In truth, he was a suave playboy in a cravat; a spendthrift with no money, grand aspirations and little interest in his daughter.

Desperate for love, Audrey Hepburn never found it in her mother Ella either, who was a cold and difficult aristocrat. It was little wonder that Audrey's chief goal in life was not to be a Hollywood star: it was to create the kind of loving family she'd never known.

Her own children, she resolved, would never feel as unwanted or unloved as she did. It was a promise she kept.

Before she met my father, there was an engagement to James Hanson, a British businessman who'd later go on to be knighted. This foundered after Audrey – then a little-known actress – was offered the role that propelled her to international stardom: playing a princess opposite Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday.

From that day on, her feet barely touched the ground. Starring in Sabrina, she plunged into an intense affair with the actor William Holden, though it didn't last long. He was not only married with three children, but he'd also had a vasectomy – a deal-breaker for a woman desperate to have children. She was still recovering from that heartbreak when Mel Ferrer came into her life.

On the face of it, they seemed to have much in common: Mel's own father had died when he was three, and his mother had never showed him any affection. Plus he was an actor, albeit a rather wooden one.

Less promisingly, he'd already been married three times and had four children. He was also a neurotic perfectionist and famously controlling. Starring with Mum in a Broadway play, he'd spend hours coaching her after rehearsals, often undermining the director's instructions.

By the time the play closed, however, the couple were engaged. Melly – as Audrey called him – wasn't interested in the kind of traditional wife Hanson had wanted; instead he pushed her to do more and more.

They married in 1954 and over the next ten years Mum starred in 12 movies and my father appeared in more than 20 films, television shows and plays.

In 1959, after suffering two miscarriages, Audrey took no chances with her next pregnancy and simply walked away from the movie business for a full year. What few people ever knew, however, was that Mel secretly hadn't wanted another child. Not only did he have four already, but he had big plans for my mother's career, in tandem with his, and taking time off wasn't part of them.

To ensure my arrival didn't create any further tension in her marriage, Audrey insisted she'd pay for everything I needed throughout my life, including my education, and that I'd never be a financial burden on Mel. She kept her word.

After I was born, Audrey suspected her husband was taking 'subconscious' steps to prevent her bringing another baby to term. Each time she became pregnant, Mel would find a reason for them to move, travel or do something energetic.

It almost became a joke. Mum would quip to friends that as soon as she had a positive result on a pregnancy test, he'd ask her: 'Can you help me with this box of books?' They all thought she was kidding; she wasn't.

Having been diagnosed with an incompetent cervix, she shouldn't have been lifting anything, traveling too much or moving house. Instead, she was meant to have complete bed rest, especially in the final trimester.

She did at least have Mel to thank for pressing her to take the iconic role of Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany's in 1961.

Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck pictured practicing a moped scene for the 1953 comedic romance Roman Holiday

This was after Marilyn Monroe had turned it down, fearing that playing a call girl would harm her image. Meanwhile, Audrey's marriage was failing. The chief problem was that my neurotic perfectionist of a father was constantly on the lookout for exciting new projects for them both.

He scoured for them almost as passionately as Mum strove to lead the simple and anonymous family life of which she'd always dreamed. Much to Mel's disapproval, she even declined to attend the New York premiere of Breakfast At Tiffany's so she could stay home with me.

He was typical of many men of his generation: self-centred and not at all in tune with the psychology of a relationship. Painfully aware that his career was never as successful as his wife's, he became increasingly difficult and temperamental and could also explode into rage.

In the end, Mum realised she couldn't save him. The day she found me tiptoeing past his room and speaking in whispers to avoid one of his outbursts was the day she knew that she'd let things go on too long.

I truly believe this was the moment she decided – if only in her heart – to leave him.

But the one thing she never wanted for me was a broken home, so she continued to cling to her failing marriage. She was now one of the most adored women in the world, but I know she could hardly breathe. Later, she confided in me that she'd spent 'two years in hell... the worst of my life.'

My parents finally separated in 1966 when I was six, the same age Audrey had been when her father abandoned her. Mel would regret losing her for the rest of his life.

Mum's career was at its zenith: she went on to star in Charade, My Fair Lady and then How To Steal A Million. Throwing herself back into work, she started filming Two For The Road with Albert Finney. It was while they spent four months working in the South of France that they had a shortlived fling, behaving – according to friends – like teenagers in love. The irony was that in playing a woman whose marriage is on the rocks, Audrey was the happiest she'd been in years.

But when her divorce was finalised in 1968, my mother decided to give up work to look after me full-time – an extraordinary decision for a star of her calibre and standing. She felt destroyed by the divorce, which she saw as a failure on her part as much as Mel's.

She wasn't alone for long: in 1969, she married Andrea Dotti, an aristocratic Italian doctor nine years her junior. Turning her back completely on Hollywood, she decided to focus on being the best possible wife and mother.

Then eight years old, I had liked Andrea immediately.

He was kind, spending time with me and telling me to call him by a nickname of my choice – Coco, rather than Daddy.

The wedding was a simple civil ceremony at the town hall down the hill from a house my mother had bought in Switzerland. Her great friend, the designer Hubert de Givenchy, had made her a pale-pink minidress in cashmere jersey with a matching headscarf to protect her hair from the winter rain.

As she packed up and prepared to move to Andrea's home in Rome, it must have felt to Audrey like the start of something new and good.

Little did she know that she was heading into an inferno of pain. What had started promisingly as a whirlwind romance on a yacht quickly turned into a nightmare.

As plain Signora Dotti, she had quickly settled into domestic life, politely turning away film scripts because she had no intention of jeopardising her new relationship with long absences. Rising at dawn to make Andrea's morning coffee at their 12-room penthouse overlooking the Tiber River, she'd then take care of me before exercising our two dogs. She loved to wander incognito to the market and little shops to select ingredients for supper before collecting me from school each day for lunch. Evenings were devoted to her new husband.

Sadly, despite the birth of their son Luca in 1970, the marriage was good only for the first few years.

Audrey Hepburn in a publicity photo for the film Sabrina, during which she began an intense affair with the actor William Holden

In essence the problem was that Andrea drank too much – and that when he did, he lost all resistance to other women. After years as an aristocratic playboy, he wasn't prepared to relinquish his relentless socialising.

Within a few years of their wedding, her husband had been photographed with some 200 women, and these pictures were splashed across front pages. But whenever my mother confronted Andrea, he protested that this was just how life was in Rome.

Even when Giovanna broke down and confessed that he'd brought women home to their marital bed, a part of Audrey didn't want to hear it. Divorce seemed unthinkable; instead, she blamed herself for being too old for him.

One friend who visited was surprised to see her pour herself a small whisky in the middle of the afternoon. 'It must be six o'clock somewhere,' she said with a wry smile.

From then on, for the next four years, I believe she remained with Andrea only for the sake of her sons and because of her deep respect for marriage.

To the wider world, she pretended everything was fine. 'I'm a Roman housewife, just what I want to be. Despite what you sometimes read, my marriage is working out beautifully.'

She never spoke much about her extraordinary career. So I was amazed when, at 14, I found some of her 16-millimetre films and sprawled on the attic floor to watch them.

During my personal Audrey Hepburn film festival, she climbed the stairs a few times to check on me. Always critical of her work, she'd wince – hating to see herself on screen.

If I said a film was good, she'd attribute its success to the vision and talent of the director or the rest of the cast, never herself. Nor did she ever boast about whom she'd met or her many awards.

I have no idea how long she could have hung on in her fragile emotional state, but a combination of factors eventually forced her hand. One was her very real fear that Luca or I could be kidnapped. There'd been a spate of kidnappings across Europe and my mother became paranoid about our safety. I was 13 and Luca three, and we couldn't leave the apartment unsupervised.

Then in 1974, she fell pregnant again, at the age of 45. It was, I think, a desperate and slightly insane attempt to create the family she'd always hoped for, even though she was married to a philanderer. Sadly, she lost the baby early on. Her distress at not being able to have another child chipped another little corner from her heart.

The following year, I was home with Mum one lunchtime when Andrea came bursting in with a gash to his head and blood on his shirt. Very shaken, he told us that four masked men had jumped on him as he was leaving his practice and tried to drag him into a waiting Mercedes.

When he fought back, they pistol-whipped him, but he escaped and crawled under a parked car, where he created such a racket that nearby security guards came to his rescue.

My mother was aghast. Within three days, I'd been shipped off to a Swiss boarding school, with the promise that she'd see me on weekends and holidays.

It wasn't till years later that we discovered the attempted kidnapping of Andrea had been nothing of the kind. An unhappy husband had found out he was having a fling with his wife and sent the masked men to beat him up.

So it was a direct consequence of my stepfather's infidelity that I was sent away from my mother and lost four years of family life. Despite being so deeply unhappy, my mother still held on.

Andrea kept insisting that seeing other women wasn't such a big deal for an Italian. He also accused her of being difficult to live with and overemotional.

He was alternately affectionate and apologetic and then hard-hearted and mean. Today, his behaviour would be called gaslighting. It was despicable.

Audrey now spent her days limply hanging around indoors. Once, she allowed herself to be persuaded to make another film, eight years after her last one, after being offered the role of Maid Marian in Robin And Marian, opposite Sean Connery.

But she soon discovered that the script she'd agreed to had been altered; that she didn't bond with her director; and that everything had changed since she was last on a set.

Hepburn promoting Breakfast at Tiffany's in New York in 1961

Under the new regime, the movie was being shot at breakneck speed and she could no longer see each day's raw, unedited footage – which she liked to view to see what she could correct. Completely out of her comfort zone, she admitted to being 'petrified' through much of the filming, shaking with every take.

Back home, she continued to plead with Andrea, and turned down a number of films including A Bridge Too Far, Out Of Africa and The Turning Point. But she was coming to the end of her resources.

In 1978, when I was 17, I was allowed home to La Paisible (the Peaceful Place), our home in Switzerland, to study for exams. I arrived to discover that a maid had found Audrey lying in bed, staring into nothing, an empty bottle of sleeping pills by her side.

She was rushed to hospital to have her stomach pumped. When she returned the following day, she was pale and exhausted, but I was the first person she sought. Sitting me down, my mother said: 'I know what this looks like, Sean, but please try to understand. I was in so much pain that I desperately wanted to knock myself out.

'I overdid it with the Mogadon, that's all. I've been hurting too much and needed it to stop. I'm so dreadfully sorry. I never meant to take my life.'

I believed her. And at least one good thing resulted: the fact that she'd been so low that she'd risked leaving her sons motherless was enough to convince her that her marriage was truly over. The loss of her babies and the failure of her marriages had almost broken her.

'I hung on in both marriages very hard, as long as I could, for the children's sake,' she'd say later.

'You always hope that if you love somebody enough, everything will be all right, but it isn't always true.'

In 1980, one of Audrey's dearest friends invited her to California and introduced her to a Dutchman called Robert Wolders. He'd recently lost his wife, the 68-year-old actress Merle Oberon, to a stroke.

At 43, he was seven years younger than my mother. And within a very short time, he had become her lover.

Although all the men in her life had disappointed her, my mother felt she'd finally found someone kind whom she could trust. This time, thankfully, she was right. My father, a genius at acid commentary, described Rob as 'the door opener'.

My own view was that he appeared to have no aspirations other than to play the devoted escort: adorable but a doormat.

Nobody could deny, however, that he made Mum laugh for the first time in years as they shared their passions for everything from dogs to the countryside, books to gardens.

For the first time, she was allowed to be herself without anyone else forcing an agenda on her or behaving in cruel or hurtful ways.

Rob also took great care of her, accompanying her to dangerous places in Africa and Asia after she decided to become a goodwill ambassador for Unicef in 1988. In her final years, Audrey had been free to choose the kind of life and kind of man that suited her best.

Yet, as always, she was constantly seeking reassurance that she was loved and that she mattered.

And it took her a long time, right up to her death from cancer in 1993, to be convinced that she'd raised her sons with more than enough love to compensate for her divorces.

Adapted from Intimate Audrey by Sean Hepburn Ferrer & Wendy Holden (HarperCollins, £25) to be published April 9.

© Sean Hepburn Ferrer & Wendy Holden 2026.

To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to April 11; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.