7 Audrey Hepburn Films To Watch (That Aren’t Breakfast At Tiffany’s)

A Cinderella story in reverse, Roman Holiday was also the film to kick-start Hepburn's own Hollywood fairy tale. In her first major screen role, the then 24-year-old ingénue starred as Princess Ann, the young heir to a generic European throne. Tired of her royal duties on a trip to Rome, she crosses paths with an American reporter (played by Gregory Peck) when she decides to explore the city incognito. Both a love story and a love letter to the Italian capital itself (Roman Holiday was the first Hollywood production to shoot entirely on location in Rome), the film won its star a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and her only Academy Award – a feat almost unheard of for a first-time lead that's testament to Hepburn's megawatt charm and grace.

'The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain…' After Holly Golightly, My Fair Lady's Eliza Dolittle (another winning heroine with an appropriately breezy name) is perhaps Hepburn's most-loved (and most-watched) role. A big-screen re-imagining of the Broadway show, itself based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, My Fair Lady sees a snobbish professor (played by Rex Harrison) attempt to transform Cockney flower girl Eliza into a 'lady' of distinction. Its charm hasn't waned in the fifty-something years since the film's release, and while it didn't earn Hepburn a second Best Actress gong, it's one of the last great Hollywood musicals.

The legendary costumier Edith Head famously described Audrey Hepburn as 'a girl who was born to make designers happy.' Nowhere is this more in evidence than in Funny Face, a joyful hop, skip and jump through the fashion industry that echoes a real-life romance between photographer Richard Avedon (whose memorable opening sequence for the film is still cited as an inspiration for fashion shoots today) and his wife. Audrey plays a bookshop assistant who becomes a reluctant fashion plate when she is spotted by formidable editor Maggie Prescott (based on legendary Harper's and Vogue editor Diana Vreeland). After the actress made a personal request, Hubert de Givenchy was responsible for dressing Hepburn from Funny Face onwards: from the red dress in the Louvre to more modern, structured designs modelled on fashion shoots, it's a film packed with sartorial moments that still feel fresh and exciting.

1954's Sabrina is the sort of fast-talking romance that golden age Hollywood did oh-so well (isn't everything more romantic in black and white?) As the young Sabrina, daughter of the chauffeur to a wealthy family, Hepburn plays to charming type as an ingénue, while Humphrey Bogart and William Holden join her as the two rich brothers she falls in and out of love with. Her character is typically graced with uncannily chic fashion sense: Sabrina marked the first time that Hepburn worked with Hubert de Givenchy, who, too busy to design original costumes, let the star pick out some pieces from his atelier. The re-make that no one asked for came in 1991: despite casting Harrison Ford in the Bogart role, it could never measure up to the original.

Before the BBC's epic adaptation of Tolstoy's famously lengthy tome came a similarly sprawling big screen version, boasting a Gone With The Wind-worthy run time of three and a half hours (despite this, the film still offers a pretty condensed version of the original tale...) While not an immediate hit like Roman Holiday or Funny Face, the 1956 War and Peace offers a different take on the ingénue roles that Hepburn had become so famous for, and has all the lavish sets and intricate costuming that you'd expect from a Hollywood period drama. Audrey stars as Natasha Rostova (the role taken by Lily James in last year's BBC take), while her then husband Mel Ferrar was in romantic hero mode as Prince Andrei (as also played by James Norton).

It's hard to believe with fifty years hindsight, but Breakfast at Tiffany's left critics nonplussed upon its release in 1961. For her next role, Audrey changed tack: described as 'the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made,' Charade is a classic thriller spliced with the fast-paced repartee of a screwball comedy. Placed opposite yet another iconic (and yes, much older) star, Cary Grant, Hepburn plays Regina Lampert, a woman on the verge of divorcing her wealthy husband when she learns that he has been thrown from a moving train in Paris – and that his $250,000 fortune was dubiously acquired. Joining forces with Grant's charming stranger, she must dodge the criminals who are after her husband's money, and attempt to disentangle herself from a mounting conspiracy. It's certainly fun to see Audrey's character take the lead – and her costumes are a masterclass in 60s elegance.

Now overlooked in favour of her breezier, crowd-pleasing classics, The Children's Hour shows Hepburn's versatility as an actress (something which often gets buried under her series of wide-eyed, romantic heroine roles and the sea of Breakfast at Tiffany's merch). Returning to work with William Wyler (who cast and directed her in Roman Holiday), she stars alongside Shirley MacLaine, playing two close friends whose work at a private school for girls is disrupted when one pupil claims that the pair are embroiled in an 'inappropriate' relationship (this being 1961, the word 'lesbian' could definitely not be heard on screen).