For an actress whose career is built on famous roles like Princess Ann on that scooter in Rome or Holly Golightly eating breakfast alone, it is hard to picture Audrey Hepburn living with regret. However, long after the cameras stopped flashing in the 1950s, she still carried the weight of one specific “what if.”
It wasn’t ‘The Diary of Anne Frank‘, which she declined because it brought back painful memories of her own childhood during the war. It also wasn’t ‘Cleopatra‘ or ‘The Exorcist‘, offers she passed on for practical reasons. Instead, the movie that stayed with Hepburn until her later years was ‘The Turning Point‘, a 1977 drama about aging ballerinas directed by Herbert Ross. Hepburn later said that the part of Emma Jacklin, a former dancer struggling with the end of her career, was “the one film that got away from me.”
How World War II Destroyed Audrey Hepburn’s Ballet Dreams
To get why this movie hit her so hard, you have to know about the dancer behind the movie star. Before she won an Oscar, Audrey Hepburn was a young woman who dreamed of ballet.
During the terrible winter of 1944 in Nazi occupied Holland, she studied dance at the Arnhem Conservatory. She lived on almost no food and secretly performed to raise money for the Dutch resistance. To Hepburn, ballet wasn’t just a hobby; it was what kept her going.
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But the war left lasting damage to her body. The lack of food weakened her and stunted her growth. A teacher once told her plainly that her height and the muscle damage from the war meant she would never become a prima ballerina. That news crushed her first dream for good.
Why ‘The Turning Point’ Matched Audrey Hepburn’s Real Life
‘The Turning Point‘, which starred Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine, was like a time capsule of that lost life. It takes place inside a dance company and follows two friends: one becomes a star, played by Bancroft, while the other leaves the stage for family, played by MacLaine. Hepburn, who had mostly stopped acting by 1977 to raise her sons Sean and Luca, saw herself in that script. It showed her the road she never took. Here was a chance to play a woman literally trying to figure out who she is as her career comes to an end.
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“That was the one film that got away from me,” Hepburn reportedly said, which was rare for her. She usually preached about looking forward, not back. She once said it would be “awful to die and look back miserably… at opportunities missed.” But ‘The Turning Point‘ stayed with her anyway.
Audrey Hepburn’s Lasting Regret Was Mourning the Ballerina She Never Became
In the end, Anne Bancroft got the role, and the movie earned 11 Oscar nominations. That was a record for a film that won none. For Hepburn, who spent her final years working for UNICEF and helping children instead of thinking about her own past, the regret wasn’t just about missing out on an award. It was bigger than that. She wasn’t just an actress who passed on a script. She was a ballerina who missed her own life.
She once said of another movie, ‘The Nun’s Story‘, “The part was suited to my nature.” But that film was art copying her history. ‘The Turning Point‘ would have been art copying her soul. It remains the quiet movie that still plays on in the “what if” of Hollywood history. In many ways it was the last dance that never happened.
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