Audrey Hepburn bravely battled the Nazi occupation as a young ballerina in Holland — but her exploits as a spy also covered up her family’s shameful secret! The future star of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” secretly raised money for Dutch Resistance fighters battling Hitler’s forces, and even relayed messages by hiding them in her shoes. The popular local dancer even risked her life to carry a note from the Resistance to a British paratrooper who’d landed in woods near her town. Audrey’s own brave exploits, however, were motivated by her own father serving as a Nazi spy, and her mother’s role as a Nazi sympathizer praising Germany’s fascist movement as the road to a “new world!”
British author Alexander Walker unearthed the horrific family scandal in his biography “Audrey — Her Real Story,” and told The National ENQUIRER of how Audrey’s parents had even “visited Hitler’s headquarters and attended a Nazi rally in Nuremberg.” The author commented on Audrey’s attempts to cover up an Old Hollywood scandal, saying: “It’s no wonder Audrey hid this from the world. When her career was starting up in the early 1950s, it would have ruined her…”
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Walker had grown suspicious over the lack of information about Joseph Hepburn-Ruston, and began digging through musty war records and interviewing former associates who confessed Joseph that Hepburn-Ruston's "press agency" was a spy cell operated from the German Embassy in London.
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The agency's job was to spread Nazi propaganda, while collecting and funneling intelligence back to Germany," said Walker. "After the war broke out, Joseph was arrested as a security risk on a very serious charge - hostile association with the enemy. "He was interned in England for the duration of the war, spending five years in custody."
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Audrey's mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra, had penned several articles for a newspaper published by the English Fascist Party. "She called for a 'new world' to be built on the beliefs of fascism," reported Walker, adding the baroness abandoned her fascist sympathies while living with Audrey in Holland — where she'd fled after her husband was convicted.
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Audrey's parents had already been separated since 1935, when Audrey's mother caught Joseph in bed with her 6-year-old daughter's nanny. During the war, Audrey began acting in stage productions, then after the war she shot to stardom in Broadway's "Gigi" before making a series of hit films.
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But the Oscar-winning star constantly worried that her parents' backgrounds would derail her career, so she "deliberately misled interviewers," said Walker. In one interview she said her father was shot by the Germans. In another, she claimed he'd vanished after moving to one of England's far-flung colonies.
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But, said Walker, Audrey knew that "after the war, her father went back to Ireland to live quietly. And Audrey saw him again 10 years after the war. She made sure he was well looked-after in his final years. He lived to be 94, dying in 1980." Ella passed away soon afterwards, with Audrey also taking care of her until the end.
Walker had grown suspicious over the lack of information about Joseph Hepburn-Ruston, and began digging through musty war records and interviewing former associates who confessed Joseph that Hepburn-Ruston's "press agency" was a spy cell operated from the German Embassy in London.
Photo credit: Getty Images
The agency's job was to spread Nazi propaganda, while collecting and funneling intelligence back to Germany," said Walker. "After the war broke out, Joseph was arrested as a security risk on a very serious charge - hostile association with the enemy. "He was interned in England for the duration of the war, spending five years in custody."
Photo credit: Getty Images
Audrey's mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra, had penned several articles for a newspaper published by the English Fascist Party. "She called for a 'new world' to be built on the beliefs of fascism," reported Walker, adding the baroness abandoned her fascist sympathies while living with Audrey in Holland — where she'd fled after her husband was convicted.
Photo credit: Getty Images
Audrey's parents had already been separated since 1935, when Audrey's mother caught Joseph in bed with her 6-year-old daughter's nanny. During the war, Audrey began acting in stage productions, then after the war she shot to stardom in Broadway's "Gigi" before making a series of hit films.
Photo credit: Getty Images
But the Oscar-winning star constantly worried that her parents' backgrounds would derail her career, so she "deliberately misled interviewers," said Walker. In one interview she said her father was shot by the Germans. In another, she claimed he'd vanished after moving to one of England's far-flung colonies.
Photo credit: Getty Images
But, said Walker, Audrey knew that "after the war, her father went back to Ireland to live quietly. And Audrey saw him again 10 years after the war. She made sure he was well looked-after in his final years. He lived to be 94, dying in 1980." Ella passed away soon afterwards, with Audrey also taking care of her until the end.
Photo credit: Getty Images
