Photograph: Cinetext Bildarchiv/Paramount Pictures/Allstar 11.

The 29-year age gap seems a bit icky in hindsight: Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina. But the 27-year age gap between the leads, exacerbated by Gary Cooper already showing signs of his terminal illness, proved discomfiting even for contemporary viewers. Hepburn plays the cello-playing daughter of a private detective who charms a millionaire playboy in Billy Wilder’s elegant, Lubitsch-like romcom set in Paris. “The reason I chose Audrey is that she is so clean and wholesome,” said the director, William Wyler. Well-meaning but dated melodrama adapted from Lillian Hellman’s play These Three, about two schoolteachers (played by Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine) whose lives are ruined when a pupil spreads a rumour that they’re lesbians. The star’s final film appearance was little more than a cameo, but what a cameo! Bonus points for donating her entire $1m salary to Unicef. Hepburn, in dazzling white cable-knit, literally represents heaven in Steven Spielberg’s remake of A Guy Named Joe, a movie guaranteed to make you blub. Hepburn is basically miscast as a Native American in John Huston’s dour western even worse, she broke her back in a serious riding accident during production. The Unforgiven (1960)Ī Texas rancher’s daughter is revealed to be a Kiowa, leading to friction between her adoptive family, local bigots and the tribe demanding her return. A dour western: Audrey Hepburn and John Saxon in The Unforgiven.

Audrey wait