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Audrey Kathleen van Heemstra Ruston was born in Brussels to a Dutch mother, Ella van Heemstra, and British father, Joseph Hepburn-Ruston.
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At age 5, Audrey was sent to boarding school in England by her mother.
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Her father walks out on the family leaving no fowarding address. Audrey quotes that her father's disappearance was "the most traumatic event in my life."
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Her parents formally divorce, and although her father is given visitation rights, he fails to follow them.
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Audrey moved to a family in Arnhem and is forced to quickly learn Dutch. Many years later, when she was asked if she felt more Dutch or English, she said she leaned towards English "because I was more English than Dutch when I went to Holland."
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German troops and artillery march through Arnhem. Dutch resources are exploited fully by Germany and, in time, virtually all of the van Heemstra family's property will be confiscated: property, homes, bank accounts, securities, jewelry.
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Audrey begins starting serious ballet practice under Winja Marova at the Arnhem School of Music. She studies there though to mid 1944, also becoming the teacher's star pupil. Food rationing drop severely, and by spring it is hard to get the single weekly rationed egg, let alone meat; by summer there is no tea of coffee. During winter the fuel shortage means that only one room per home is allowed to be heated.
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Audrey's uncle and four others were executed by the Nazis purely for publicity and retribution for a Dutch underground attempt to blow up a train. "We saw young men put against the wall and shot, and they'd close the street and then open it and you could pass by again...Don't discount anything awful you hear or read about the Nazis. It's worse than you could ever imagine." according to Audrey, who also eyewitnessed the execution.
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Audrey begins drawing herself more deeply into music and dancing, finding an outlet for her talents in a series of "blackout performances," which were held in secret with locked windows and drawn blinds. These performances were a fundraising activity Resistance. During the war, Audrey also acts as a courier and occasional secret messenger for the Resistance, as children often did, carrying messages and illegal leaflets stuffed in socks and shoes.
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While studying dancing and music, Audrey helped instruct the youngest students in the School. She also earned her family money by giving under-the-table private lessons. However eventually, food becomes so scarce that it weakened Audrey to the point that that she had to stop dancing temporarily.
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Audrey is chosen to dance with Gaskell's top student star in a matinee performance at Amsterdam's Hortus theatre. Wrote a critic: "She didn't have a lot of great technique, but she definitely had talent."
Audrey is introduced by a friend to a photographer, at whose studio she begins to do some posing, quickly developing a natural feel for it. At this stage, largely ignorant of the film world, Audrey's ambitions lie in dance. -
With her mother, Audrey visits London briefly where she auditions for the celebrated Marie Lambert ballet school. She is accepted with scholarship, however her enrollment is postponed due to lack of funds. However despite her ambitions for the ballet, Audrey increasingly acknowledges that because of her limitations" her height and comparative lack of training" that her future is not to be in the ballet. She then begins acting.
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Audrey gets a major supporting role in The Secret People. The role utilises her ballet skills and one dramatic scene evokes memories of the Arnhem bombing. During this production she is offered her next role: Nous Irons à Monte Carlo, shot on location on the French Riviera. She is also engaged to Gigi.
