I suppose people could blame me for ending Audrey Hepburn’s career. She knew her potential. If she had kept working, the parts were there for her, and her success professionally would have continued at a high level for years. But she wanted to be with her family. She wanted a private life. And she couldn’t bear the thought that she might fail as a mother. It was too important to her. I remember her long hair, her bare feet, which as a little boy I often caressed while she put her makeup on. Whenever she had to go to a dinner or a cocktail party, she would always say, “Oh, if only I could only stay home and eat in the kitchen with you.” I remember school days, cramming for exams for which she probably fretted more than I did. She would test me before bed and again in the morning, waking up with a sort of sleepy head only adults enjoy. I remember her elation at good grades, her support and positiveness for the “not so good ones”. I remember sleepovers on weekends, when we would chat with the lights out, during those precious few moments before one falls asleep. We would talk about feelings and plans and people and things, but in that way that is specific to that darkness, like two souls suspended. I am often asked what it was like to have a famous mother. I always answer that I don’t know. I knew her first as my mother and then as my best friend. She wanted to be a mother very much so when she had the opportunity, she did it to the fullest extent of the law. Audrey Hepburn’s son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer +