The eyes have it: how the world fell for Hepburn

AUDREY HEPBURN by Ian Woodward (Virgin, $72).

IT WAS the eyes that did it - there you go, my modest contribution to the great debate on: ''What made Audrey Hepburn so special?'' Cecil Beaton, among others, seemed to think so too. He dwelled at length on ''the enormous heron's eyes'', topped by ''those dark eyebrows slanted towards the Far East''. And why not? Others pointed at her balletic grace, her broader beauty, a sense of humour, vulnerability even. What was never in doubt, however, was the puzzling, hard-to-pin-down nature of the movie phenomenon who died earlier this year, aged 63.

Today's youngsters may not even have known her. And if they did, it would have been as a distinguished middle-aged lady who worked in the charity game. Yet when she abruptly quit full-time movie-making in 1966 she was, with Elizabeth Taylor, the highest-paid female star in the world.

Not for her though the weight gain, Betty Ford Clinic and perfume endorsement career downturn of the ageing star. No. Hepburn stuck to her non-conformist guns and pottered around in Switzerland with her family until the cries of the world's starving children drew her to UNICEF in 1988.

With videos of Hepburn classics such as Breakfast at Tiffany's, Roman Holiday and Charade readily available nowadays, anyone with the faintest aspirations to good taste can talk semi-knowledgeably about her.

Her death, of cancer, will have saddened millions who became captivated by her during those dizzy 15 years from the early 1950s when Hepburn charmed the world.