Hollywood icon Audrey Hepburn reportedly turned down a major 1950s film role due to personal trauma from the Second World War. Her son, Sean Hepburn-Ferrer, claims she declined the lead in the 1959 adaptation of *The Diary Of Anne Frank*.
Hepburn, who lived in the Netherlands during the war, was given a draft of Anne Frank's diary in 1946. According to Hepburn-Ferrer in Wendy Holden’s 2026 biography *Intimate Audrey*, his mother felt Frank "wrote about everything I experienced and felt."
After being offered the role by director George Stevens, Hepburn re-read the book. Her son stated that she was left "quite destroyed again" and suffered recurring nightmares. Hepburn-Ferrer claimed his mother said, "War left me with a deep knowledge of human suffering, which I expect many other young people never know about."
The role of Anne Frank eventually went to Millie Perkins. Instead, Hepburn starred in *The Nun's Story* (1959), earning her a third Oscar nomination and a second Bafta.