Audrey Hepburn Smoking Facts

As a role model for younger girls, many people don’t believe that Audrey Hepburn was a smoker.  The idea of Audrey Hepburn smoking doesn’t come to their minds because they are too consumed with everything else that is charming about her.  Let’s rip the band-aid off and grow up, did Audrey Hepburn smoke? Yes she did.  She started smoking around the age of 15 (after world war 2) and was a considered constant smoker during her acting career. In fact, at certain times in her career she has been reported (Audrey Hepburn) smoking about 3 packs a day. That’s 60 cigarettes a day!  Audrey Hepburn was smoking more than a chimney!

My Compiled List of Audrey Hepburn Smoking Facts:

And remember, you’re more than welcome to share with me any insights, comments, additions, or mistakes with my info in the comments 😉

1. Audrey Hepburn smoked sometimes up to 3 packs a day.
2. 3 packs a day is the equivalent to 60 Cigarettes a day – (20 cigarettes in a pack).
3. Audrey Hepburn started smoking around the age of 15 to 16.
4. List of movies that Audrey Hepburn smoked in:
   • Roman Holiday (1953) – smoking review
   • Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) – smoking review
   • Bloodline (1979) – smoking review
   • Charade (1963) – smoking review
   • How to Steal a Million (1966) – smoking review
   • Paris – When It Sizzles (1964) – smoking review
   • Two for the Road (1967) – smoking review
5. Like most people, Audrey Hepburn smoked because it calmed her nerves and anxiety.  She doesn’t seem like she would ever get stressed, right? Well, she is human afterall.  She was a deep thinker and reflector who enjoyed being alone by herself – she’s an introvert.   Just because Audrey was an introvert doesn’t mean she didn’t know how to socialize.  She was very good at it for being an introvert. A lot of the times, you would see Audrey Hepburn socially smoke with other costars.
6. Audrey Hepburn’s Favorite Cigarettes are:
   • “And she smoked Gold Flake Cigarettes – that’s an English brand – in a long filter cigarette holder.”, Photoplay magazine, 3rd page ’54
   • Kent cigarettes became her brand of choice later in life, also smoked IRL with a holder, People Magazine, ’80
7.  More delightful excerpts about Audrey Hepburn Smoking:
   •  “The postage stamp was taken out of circulation because of the cigarette. Did Audrey Hepburn smoke? She did. And not just as Holly Golightly in the film [Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)]. Even in her private life she couldn’t leave cigarettes alone in more than 40 years. So why was a graphic designer not allowed to immortalise the actress on a postage stamp in the way that she is nevertheless remembered by many? Namely as Holly Golightly, coquettishly poking out her particularly long cigarette holder from beneath her broad-brimmed hat” , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Oct. 6th, 2005
   • “A heavy smoker who liked a glass of bourbon, she had an earthy sense of humour and a robust sexual appetite…[on May 4, 1945] ‘Freedom has a special smell to me – the smell of British petrol and British cigarettes. When I ran out to welcome the soldiers, I inhaled their petrol fumes as if it were a priceless perfume and I demanded a cigarette, even though it made me choke’… she never again lost her appetite for tobacco… [in summer 1954] Biting her fingernails to the quick, smoking constantly”, from “Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn” by Donald Spoto, Daily Mail (UK), May 13, ’06
   • “I met her privately in her suite at Claridge’s. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon, but she seized a large Scotch thankfully. ‘I’m not a lush’, she explained in that distinctive, faintly-foreign accent, a legacy of her Dutch upbringing, ‘but I’ve been up since four and I need a pick-up’. She chain-smoked too, clearly ragged with exhaustion”, Sunday Mail (UK), Jul. 3, ’88
   • “the generosity of the hospital patients [when doing voluntary work at Deaconess Hospital, Arnhem, in 1945] also got Audrey started on a lifelong addiction to smoking cigarettes…In later, more health-conscious days, her chain-smoking would often shock those who expected Audrey Hepburn to be perfect. ‘The only bad thing I can say about Audrey – the only thing – is that she smoked,’ designer friend Jeffrey Banks recalls…The underlying cause of Audrey’s frail health was the asthma and anemia that had plagued her since the war, combined with her addiction to cigarettes. As long as she continued to puff a pack or more of her favorite English-cut Gold Flakes per day, the wheezing and the coughing weren’t going to disappear…Though she wanted to stop smoking , she couldn’t. But she was trying to restrict herself to six cigarettes per day, using a filtered holder that her mother sent her from Dunhill in London [1954]…One secular pleasure that Audrey didn’t give up was smoking cigarettes, which she did even in her nun’s habit while relaxing between takes [for The Nun’s Story, 1958]…Audrey fell into what she later described as a ‘black decline,’ turning into a nervous wreck who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day [1960]”, “Audrey Hepburn: A Biography” by Warren G. Harris, ’94
   • In the book, Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris, “Audrey smoked English Gold Flakes in a long, filtered holder … ‘My mother taught me to stand straight, sit erect and to smoke only six cigarettes a day … she was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and was fifteen pounds underweight … whenever she smoked a cigarette, she stubbed it out in a tiny white ashtray, then put the butt into a wastebasket beside her bed … Audrey went into a deep depression. Her weight dropped to ninety-eight pounds and she was smoking three packs a day … When she needs a match for a cigarette, the look on her face is like a deer on a rifle range … She said, ‘I have some sins’, and one them was smoking. She was smoking cigarettes and answering letters in her white dressing gown with her hair loose … she was so nervous … pacing back and forth, smoking, her hands ice cold”, “Audrey Hepburn” by Barry Paris, ’01, pgs. 93, 105, 110, 163, 167, 288, 323, 361
   • “Her one vice, smoking, came from the cigarettes she saw American soldiers smoking when her homeland was liberated. She became addicted to life on them”, “Audrey Hepburn: A Biography” by Warren Harris, ’94
   • “The day typically wound down with Hepburn ambling around the house with a Kent cigarette and her nightly ‘two fingers’ of J&B Scotch”, People Magazine, Oct. 31, ’94
   •  “[(abridged extract from Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn by Donald Spoto)] As she approached her 40th birthday…smoked more than ever”, Daily Mail (UK), May 15, ’06
8. Other References & Magazines where Audrey Hepburn Smoked
   • “In the throng at the after-Oscars party: Audrey Hepburn (wearing extraordinary crystal earrings and lighting her own cigarette a la Holly Golightly)”, Los Angeles Times, April 13, ’88
   • “A heavy smoker”, Bay Area Reporter, Nov. 16, ’06
   • “a lifelong smoker”, The Independent (UK), Dec. 9, ’06
   • “Audrey said soberly as she lit a cigarette. She smokes only moderately.”, see page 5, Photoplay magazine, ’57
   • “‘I love making movies,” she says in that wonderfully elegant voice, as she leans forward so her press agent can light her cigarette “, New York Times, Jun. 4, ’80
   • chain smoker, “The Book of People” by Christoper P. Andersen, ’81
   • “She chain smoked [on the set of My Fair Lady]”, North Shore News, Aug. 2, ’99
   • “‘I read these things and I marvel,’ she says, lighting a cigarette … reaching for another cigarette”, Raleigh News & Observer, Mar. 3, ’91
   • “her white brassiere strap is showing as she holds her cigarette to the side”, Houston Chronicle, Oct. 27, ‘9
   •  “‘I was just sort of launched on this career,’ she says, lighting a cigarette and exhaling a thin stream of smoke”, Washington Post, Aug. 5, ’85
9. Audrey’s habit of smoking cigarettes caused the yellowing of Audrey’s teeth as seen below.
10. Audrey Hepburn smoking so much may have contributed to her appendix cancer that she died of.
11. Did Audrey Hepburn know that smoking was bad for your health?  We don’t know for sure. Remember that smoking was considered “safe” and healthy back in the 1920’s – 60’s and cigarettes were endorsed by doctors.  It wasn’t until later in the late 80’s and 90’s that severe warnings on cigarettes were mentioned and placed on packs. Each cigarette is estimated to destroy 60mg of vitamin C in the human body.

Audrey Hepburn Smoking Pictures