Ferrer Tale

A SON REMEMBERS "MUMMY," AUDREY HEPBURN

She was a waif-like muse to Billy Wilder, an aesthetic paragon to Cecil Beaton, a chic ideal to Hubert de Givenchy, a literary archetype to Colette, and a merciful angel to UNICEF. But to Sean Hepburn Ferrer, 43, Audrey Hepburn was above all "Mummy"—an off-camera, well-played role he celebrates in Audrey Hepburn, an Elegant Spirit: A Son Remembers (Atria).

In elegiac, Proustian passages, Sean evokes his mother's smell ("powdery, elegant, safe, strong," and at the end, he says, "like tangerines"), her sense of style (an emanation of extreme "discipline" and "simplicity"), as well as her essential sadness. She "really tried so hard, on every level, to please, be happy, be loved," writes Sean, the progeny of Hepburn's first marriage, to actor Mel Ferrer.

"My mother really was those characters you saw in the movies."

He balances his ethereal images of her with earthier vignettes—of a maternal Hepburn in the kitchen, for instance, serving up spaghetti al pomodoro (recipe included). And yes, Sean insists, his mother "ate a normal amount."

But what mortified Hepburn was that millions of children in developing countries don't—a situation that troubled the star even on her deathbed in 1993. Her last words were "I cannot understand why so much suffering ... for the children." Sean—who the following year founded the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund, which will receive a share of his book's proceeds—reflects, "The amazing torch lit by my mother still burns—pure, beautiful, and bright."

AMY FINE COLLINS