Sunday, March 26, 2000

Love Hewitt royally miscast in ABC Hepburn movie

In the casting of TV biographies, there have been some royal stumbles over the years. Anthony Andrews as Edward VIII in "The Woman He Loved." Cheryl Ladd as Princess of Monaco in "Grace Kelly." Catherine Oxenberg as the Princess of Wales in "The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana." Don Johnson as the King in "Elvis and the Beauty Queen."
  Now comes Jennifer Love Hewitt attempting to portray Hollywood royalty in "The Audrey Hepburn Story" (7 p.m. Monday, ABC). The three-hour made-for-TV movie (produced by Hewitt) chronicles the life of the Oscar winner from her troubled childhood in Holland through the war years in London, where she trained as a dancer. It ends with the star filming Blake Edwards’ "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" in 1961.
  Hewitt, at 21 a veteran of Fox’s "Party of Five" and the short-lived "Time of Your Life," is a modern sort of princess, the perky, pleasing kid-next-door sort. And she has the cutesy demeanor of an actress whose personality fits more comfortably on a TV picture than expanded across yards of white movie screen.
  Hepburn was something else altogether. Slim and regal, she seemed always to be floating just a few inches off the ground. Nobody before or since ever looked, moved, smiled or even spoke in movies like Audrey Hepburn. From her first starring role in "Roman Holiday" (for which she won an Academy Award in 1953) to her last, Steven Spielberg’s "Always" in 1989, she was the essence of charm, sophistication and gamine beauty.
  Hewitt’s essence is more elfin than gamine. Even done up in a sleek, Hepburn-like wardrobe, she looks more like a high schooler playing dress-up than any degree of Hollywood legend.
  There’s little compelling about this production, although the story of Hepburn’s life is filled with dramatic ups and downs. The movie covers those in a sequence of short, choppy chapters TV-bios are built on: Audrey and her mother fleeing the Nazis, Audrey being told she’ll never be a dancer, Audrey getting her first break on Broadway. She marries (actor Mel Ferrer portrayed here by actor Eric McCormack) and has a much longed for baby. She wins the Oscar.
  Hewitt tries her best to approximate Hepburn’s unusual Dutch-English accent, with little success. And she flattens her generous cleavage to get into those Givenchy gowns. But Hepburn she is not and will never be.
  Rent "Sabrina" or "Roman Holiday" or "The Nun’s Story" to revel in the real thing.
  Trivia note:
   "The Audrey Hepburn Story" does contain one interesting bit of casting. Keir Dullea (star of Kubrick’s masterpiece, "2001: A Space Odyssey") plays Hepburn’s stern, disloyal father, who abandons his family to start a new life for himself in London. He later pops up to see his daughter after Audrey’s become famous.
  Dullea, 63, hasn’t worked much in film or TV in recent years. My sources show his last TV appearances were 20 years ago in the NBC movie "Brave New World" and the CBS movie "No Place to Hide."
  Which just proves one of the best observations I ever read about the fleeting nature of fame. I think it was "Breakfast with Tiffany’s" writer Truman Capote who uttered the immortal line: "Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow."
  
  Watchin’ the Oscars