This Role Ended Audrey Hepburn's Career: "I Was Miserable"
By 1967, Audrey Hepburn had been Hollywood royalty for over a decade—Oscar winner, fashion icon, the face of elegance. But behind the image, she was already halfway out the door.
That year, she took on one of her toughest roles in Wait Until Dark, playing a blind woman hunted by criminals in her own apartment. The film pushed her to emotional extremes: constantly on edge, terrorized, and isolated. Onscreen, she delivered one of the most intense performances of her career. Offscreen, she was miserable.
"I had been completely miserable while making Wait Until Dark because I had been separated from my son, Sean, for the first time," she later admitted.
The timing couldn't have been worse. Her marriage to actor Mel Ferrer—who was also a producer on the film—was falling apart. Friends had long said he was controlling, and the tension on set only made things worse.
The film earned Hepburn her fifth Oscar nomination. But instead of riding the momentum, she walked away. She divorced Ferrer, left Hollywood behind, and moved to Europe full-time. It wasn't a sudden decision—she'd already been living in a Swiss village since 1960 and turning down roles for years. But Wait Until Dark was the final straw.
After that, she only made four more films in the next 30 years.
If Wait Until Dark became her unofficial curtain call, it was a hell of a note to end on. It's darker, sharper, and more suspenseful than anything else she'd done. No ballgowns, no romantic montages—just pure tension and one of the most effective jump-scares in film history.