It is interesting to compare the careers of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, who were born in the same year and were high on the list of audience favorites in 1953. Both had appeared twice on Broadway, and they had both worked as models. Grace and Audrey both had a rare, classic elegance, photogenic beauty and high public esteem. And, contrary to popular expectations, each woman became disillusioned with mere fame and gave up everything for a different life.

With Audrey and Grace, new vocabularies were needed for new styles, and the publicists pored over their dictionaries. In “real life”, if Grace or Audrey was seen in a restaurant or at a pubic event, there was quite literally a collective, audible intake of breath: it was the appearance of a goddess to mere mortals.

Never mind that Audrey and Grace were both healthy young women who dated, had love affairs, wore jeans, occasionally used a four-letter word and liked to balance hard work with a good time and laughter. They both exhibited a natural refinement and were unfailingly courteous to colleagues and strangers, but these qualities were presented as the sum total of their personalities. They were nothing like goddesses in person, although they were certainly beautiful, stylish and always considerate. They were women to respect, but they could never be fully define as merely respectable—a term that alternately amused and annoyed them both. –Donald Spoto, High Society: The life of Grace Kelly