What many may not know about Hepburn is that as a teenager she helped the Dutch resistance in WWII. Both Hepburn and Anne Frank were born in 1929. The two never met but Hepburn felt close to the young diarist, and lived within 60 miles of each other. While Hepburn was not Jewish, she spnt several years of the war in a cellar to use as a bomb shelter and even faced near starvation. During this time she managed to arrange illegal dance performances, which raised money to support local families who were hiding Jews.

After the war, Otto reached out to Hepburn asking if she would play the role of his daughter for the movie adaptation of the well-known diary. But she declined. Hepburn felt unable to play the part, having had such a traumatic experience during the war, it would be too dificult. She said to Frank: “It’s a little bit as if this had happened to my sister .. in a way she was my soul sister.”