1967 Audrey Hepburn Thriller, With a 96% Rotten Tomatoes Score, Earned Her a Final Oscar Nomination

Audrey Hepburn's final film, Always, was released in 1989. However, the last time she was nominated for an Oscar came two decades before, for her work in the critically acclaimed thriller Wait Until Dark. Hepburn was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for her role as Susy Hendrix in the 1967 film, which also starred Alan Arkin and Richard Crenna. In the movie, Hepburn, who was 38 years old at the time, portrays a blind woman who is terrorized in her New York City apartment by a group of men searching for a lost drug shipment. To prepare for her role as a visually impaired woman, Hepburn, along with director Terence Young, visited New York's Lighthouse for the Blind and spent weeks there together. According to the Splice and Splatter podcast, while at the school, both would wear shields over their eyes to learn to navigate without sight, and Hepburn even took Braille lessons. 'Audrey was miles faster than I. She was quickly able to find her way, blindfolded, around the Lighthouse rooms and corridors,' Young said, per Warren G. Harris in the book 'Audrey Hepburn: A Biography.' 'When it was my turn, every natural disaster took place.' Despite her unparalleled portrayal of Susy Hendrix, Hepburn had some stiff competition and lost the Oscar to Katherine Hepburn in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Anne Bancroft (The Graduate), Faye Dunaway (Bonnie and Clyde), and Edith Evans (The Whisperers) were also nominated that year. Following the film's release, which currently holds an impressive 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, Hepburn took a nearly 10-year break from acting to focus on raising her two sons, Sean and Luca. She returned to the big screen in 1976's Robin and Maid Marian alongside Sean Connery. 'Miss Hepburn is perhaps too simple and trusting, and Alan Arkin (as a sadistic killer) is not particularly convincing in an exaggerated performance. But there are some nice, juicy passages of terror,' Roger Ebert wrote in his review at the time, giving the film three and a half stars. 'And after a slow start, the plot does seduce you.' Trending News Writer