Chapter 11: A Family Home

Chapter 11: A Family Home

Audrey left Hollywood as quickly as possible. She wanted to be near Mel, so she moved to Spain with him for eight months. She wanted to be happy again and to stop fighting. She remembered when she was a child. Her father left her when she was six years old. Now her son, Sean, was the same age, and she did not want him to lose his father.

She then bought a house in a small town in the French part of Switzerland. She had white English flowers in the yard, and Sean played with the other children. For a short time, in 1965, Audrey and Mel were happy again.

Audrey made a successful movie with Peter O’Toole, How to Steal a Million. After that movie, young women everywhere wore the same big white sunglasses and short white skirts.

In 1966 she made two for the Road. This was a movie about the problems of married life. Audrey was very good in this movie, but it was more successful in Europe than in the United States. The most important actor in the movie was Albert Finney. He was younger than Audrey, and she liked him very much. She went drinking and dancing with him in the evening, and had a wonderful time.

In 1967 things started to go wrong again. She made Wait until Dark, and people liked it. But Audrey was not happy. She was away from her son, and Mel was friendly with other women.

She became pregnant again, but lost the child. This was the end for her and Mel. “I was very sad when Mel left,” she said later. “I was more famous than him, and he felt bad. But I really tried to be a good wife. My family was always more important to me than my movies.”