Taking Names

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Hepburn's sad love life

The late Audrey Hepburn desperately wanted to have children, but she kept having bad luck with famous boyfriends who turned out to be sterile, says a new biography on the Oscar-winning beauty, the New York Post reports.

According to Donald Spoto's "Enchantment" (due in stores this week), Miss Hepburn took up with married star William Holden, 11 years her senior, in the 1950s. When the two made "Sabrina," "she was completely won over when he promised to divorce [his wife] and marry her," Mr. Spoto writes.

"Audrey at once raised the issue of children: she wanted two, three, four and more -- she would abandon her career to have a family ... then he broke the news of his sterility." It turns out that Mr. Holden had undergone a vasectomy a few years earlier -- at the request of his wife.

Later, after marrying Mel Ferrer in what turned out to be an unhappy union, Miss Hepburn (who died in 1993) took up with Robert Anderson, who wrote the screenplays for such classics as "The Best Years of Our Lives" and "Rebecca." She quickly told him about her desire to be a mother. "He took this as an implication that -- were she to leave Mel for him -- she wanted and expected to have children. With great sadness, Bob told Audrey that he could never be a father -- he was congenitally sterile." She ended their affair and later finally would give birth to a son with Mr. Ferrer in 1960.

Despite her proclivity for fooling around with married men, she didn't like it when the shoe was on the other foot, once telling Ben Gazzara (as they filmed "Bloodline" together in the late 1970s ) that her second husband, psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, had been cheating on her. "Not only that Andrea had been unfaithful in her absences, but that he had chosen their home for his trysts. She was, she admitted, so distraught that she had seriously contemplated suicide," Mr. Spoto writes.

Soon after that revelation, Miss Hepburn fell into the arms of Mr. Gazzara. "No promises were made," Mr. Gazzara recalled. "For us it was going to be an 'on-location romance.'" Later, according to Mr. Spoto, when Mr. Gazzara took up with another lover -- and Miss Hepburn tried to visit him at his hotel, he refused to see her.

Knot so fast

Aaron Carterhas broken off his engagement to his older brother's ex-girlfriend.

The 18-year-old pop singer called off his engagement to 22-year-old actressKari Ann Penichejust a week after he proposed onstage in Las Vegas, Associated Press reports, citing a story published Sunday on the Us Weekly Web site.