Top 79 Quotes & Sayings by Sean Hepburn Ferrer

I grew up in the countryside as a normal kid.

I was born in Switzerland and raised all over Europe, basically.

We had a good education, but we didn't walk away feeling better than anybody else.

She was humble and put herself down. She felt her feet were a little too big and she had a bump on her nose and a crooked tooth. But she didn't get the tooth fixed. She didn't get the nose broken and set straight. She worked with what she had.

You have to dream in a wholesome way, not just dream about yourself, but dream about what's best for all.

She trained as a ballet dancer yet she was an iron fist in a velvet glove. My younger brother Luca and I had a wonderful childhood since she would try to guide us gently down the right path.

I can see how movie stars lose touch with reality. I can understand that, because you're told a million times a day in so many little gestures that you're somehow special and unique.

A child deserves love, affection, the chance to just play and do nothing, to sit under a tree, read a book, dream and not have a care in the world.

Only after she had passed away did I fully comprehend to what extent she had truly touched everyone.

My mother was a biographer's dream and a nightmare. She was a dream because she was a classic to write about and everybody loves her. She was a nightmare because there are no scandals, quasi-cruelties, no really juicy stuff.

She was a lioness. She was described as an iron fist in a velvet glove. She needed that culture and background to survive in the world of Hollywood where you have to fight for everything.

Once in a while, people would say, 'Look, your mom's on TV.' But as a young kid, you don't really worry about those things so much.

I think that's the greatest gift she gave us, this normal upbringing without her fame hanging over our heads. It actually prepared us for the world.

During her illness we received bags and bags of anything you can imagine, from get well cards to origami from Japan to medications. The mail lady used to come on a little moped - and she had to rent the mail truck from the town next door because she had to lug these bags to our door with thousands of cards we couldn't even open.

Even now, we're surprised by the reach of my mum, so you can imagine our surprise at the interest in my daughter. We got calls from Hollywood companies wanting to do a reality show with her and we thought, 'About what? We're not a Hollywood family.'

The love of a parent is as much nutrition as a chocolate bar.

If she looks natural on screen, that's just the way she was in life - very unassuming and full of life.

My mother was not very good about keeping clothes; if they were outdated, she'd give them to an aunt or cousins or museums.

My mother believed strongly that every life matters. She demonstrated on a daily basis, particularly through her humanitarian work as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, her strong belief in the value of every life.

An interesting question that has been recurring is that she appears to have been this delicate woman in all these films, but really she was a woman of substance wasn't she? And I say yes, you don't get to be Audrey Hepburn if you are a sort of 'babe in the woods.' It takes a lot of character, a lot of vision, good boundaries and hard work.

I read an article some years back in which Emma Thompson demeaned my mother's acting ability. My mother would be the first person to say that she wasn't the best actress in the world. But she was a movie star.

I'm often asked what it was like to have a famous mother. I always answer that I really don't know. I knew her first as my mother, and then as my best friend. Only after that did I understand that she was an actress, and with time that she was truly an exceptional actress.

You know, we weren't a Hollywood family. I didn't grow up in a home with screening rooms and my mother didn't behave like a movie star.

People say to me, 'What do you think your mother would think about this new world with Instagram?' And I pause and I just say, 'Well, she really was the queen of Instagram because she was more photographed than anyone else.'

It's OK to choose your path, have a dream, not a fake one, and never let it get to your head then.

She often used to talk about the fact that during the war, her mother, because there was a little food and no heating, would have her stay in bed throughout the day, especially during the Dutch Hunger Winter, to preserve her calories.

I didn't grow up in Hollywood - the place, or the state of mind.

We are brought together by the great feelings and it is the little stuff that breaks us apart.

It's not just a world of dog-eat-dog and Trumps and all of this... there are people and there is hope and you can still get there and have a reasonable measure of success and appreciation.

She was just my mum, end of story. She was just the mum that wakes up in the morning with a sleepy head, who helps you do your homework, picks you up from school, takes you shopping for books and socks, and cares for you when you're sick.

Children, like animals, and believe me, that's a compliment in my world, feel the difference. They know where the truth lies. They can feel it in a minute if someone is genuine.

English is my last language.

She was brave and would try anything. But she was never very confident. She didn't even think she was particularly beautiful - which turned out to be a good thing because it made her act like a real person instead of a sex symbol.

We weren't a home-movie kind of a family. When that's your work and you have to do it for a living, when it's Christmastime, you don't want to see a camera in the room.

She was a wonderful mother. She was my best friend. Same for my brother. And it's funny because we didn't grow up in Hollywood. You know, once she decided that she needed to be a mother, she really gave up her career.

This woman who was a style icon basically lived in a little cotton dress all her life - a simple life.

She performed for the Dutch Resistance, not just to raise money but also to entertain people and to take their minds off the horrors they were living through. They would do plays and little musicals, trying to be discreet and not bring the attention of the soldiers.

When I had to go to school and could no longer travel to be with her on the set, she gave up her career. She felt the most valuable thing was family.

President Kennedy visited once, but that was in Switzerland and I remember the Secret Service men dressed in black swarming about the house.

She lost a couple of pregnancies before me. It was sort of this great healing for her to finally have a child.

Soon we moved to Rome and I got a little bit of a sense I was different because the paparazzi would follow me when I went to buy books or socks. But my mother never behaved like a movie star.

I didn't end her career. She chose to have children, then to make the simple choice that everyone should make really. You can't be a movie star and have children and not have one of the two suffer.

We're fortunate to have this extraordinary foundation of, I guess, not growing up in Hollywood and growing up in this farmhouse in Switzerland. She wanted a normal life for herself and for us. And it's a valuable and beautiful memory that she left us.

Because I fell in love with the idea of films early on, not because I was in the milieu, but moreso because of the potential of having a couple of hundred people in a dark room, looking at a screen.

Her mother was a Christian Scientist who didn't believe in calling doctors. So when my mother caught whooping cough as a baby, stopped breathing and turned blue, her mother revived her by spanking her on the bottom. She saw life itself as a gift and saw her own survival as precious and a matter of chance.

Sometimes I will discover a whole shoot of my mother I have never seen before.

I saw both sides, I saw normality in Switzerland as a kid and later on I saw the insanity of it all in Italy, which almost becomes hard to live with.

I find that 'Taare Zameen Par' is one of the most beautiful movies ever made about the inner world of a child.

I don't know if my mum and President Kennedy ever dated, but they were friends and there are some letters from him that she kept - sweet and innocent letters saying, 'Saw you in the play the other night and you were fantastic.'

You know, we're not a film buff family.

I believe my mother's immune system was harmed because of all the vaccinations she needed to visit different countries, when her body was already weakened after an impoverished wartime childhood.

Not only did she represent inner and outer beauty and elegance, but all the work she did at the end of her life touched so many people. She created this extraordinary legacy.

My father was a difficult and demanding man.

We all came from a culture of you got to keep moving, you got to keep doing.

But I believe that the huge advances now being made in genetic research will be the key to personalized medicine one day.

My mother often used to speak about her time during the war and during the famous hunger winter in Holland - in the latter part of the war there was no heating and very little food and so her mother used to say, 'You stay in bed most of the day to preserve your calories.'

We tend to perceive Hollywood as an industry that is trying to mitigate risk more and more.

Because by the time I went to the village school in Switzerland, we're talking about September 1965, she was finishing 'Wait Until Dark' which was released in '66. That's when she gave up being an actress to be a full-time mom - in a farmhouse with fruit trees.

It's very difficult to have a conversation about yourself when you're the granddaughter of Audrey Hepburn, as it was difficult for me to have a conversation about something without, 'What was she like? What was she really like?'

She didn't want the typical Hollywood lifestyle of juggling a career and leaving the kids at home with nannies, so she'd take me to buy socks and books and help me with my homework.