Why was Audrey Hepburn so skinny?

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Why: I'm watching Two for the Road. She is wearing what looks basically like a Spandex turtleneck and it still hangs off her.

Answer: Her thinness may have been leftover from bodily trauma she experienced as a teenager during World War II living in German-occupied Netherlands.

In 1939 (she was 10), her mother moved her and her two half-brothers to their grandfather's home in Arnhem in the Netherlands. Ella believed the Netherlands would be safe from German attack.

In 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. During the Nazi occupation, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents because an 'English sounding' name was considered dangerous.

After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse, and Arnhem was subsequently devastated by Allied artillery fire that was part of Operation Market Garden. During the Dutch famine that followed, over the winter of 1944, the Germans confiscated the Dutch people's limited food and fuel supply for themselves. People starved and froze to death in the streets. Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits.

Hepburn's half-brother, Ian van Ufford, spent time in a German labor camp. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed acute anemia, respiratory problems, and an edema.

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: Of Anne Frank, with whom she identified strongly (they were the exact same age) she said:

"We saw reprisals. We saw young men put against the wall and shot and they'd close the street and then open it and you could pass by again. If you read the diary, I've marked one place where she says 'five hostages shot today'. That was the day my uncle was shot."