Emily in Paris star Lily Collins to play Audrey Hepburn in film about Breakfast at Tiffany’s / Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Dawn of the Modern Woman is a non-fiction book by Sam Wasson

 

Emily in Paris star Lily Collins to play Audrey Hepburn in film about Breakfast at Tiffany’s

 

Collins ‘honoured and ecstatic’ to play Hepburn, in film charting the dramatic making of the 1961 romantic comedy

 

Sian Cain

Mon 23 Feb 2026 23.58 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/24/lily-collins-to-play-audrey-hepburn-film-about-breakfast-at-tiffanys#:~:text=Lily%20Collins%2C%20the%20star%20of,romantic%20comedy%20Breakfast%20at%20Tiffany's.

 

Lily Collins, the star of Netflix hit Emily in Paris, has been cast to play Audrey Hepburn in a new film about the making of her 1961 romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

 

The as-yet-untitled film will be based on Sam Wasson’s nonfiction book Fifth Avenue, 5 AM: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, with a script written by Alena Smith, creator of the Apple TV series Dickinson. No director has been announced yet.

 

Collins, the daughter of musician Phil Collins, shared her excitement in a statement on Instagram.

 

“It’s with almost 10 years of development and a lifetime of admiration and adoration for Audrey that I’m finally able share this,” she wrote. “Honoured and ecstatic don’t begin to express how I feel … ”

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s was initially a novella by Truman Capote, published in 1958. Set in the 1940s, the story is narrated by a struggling writer who moves into a new apartment in New York and befriends his glamorous neighbour Holly Golightly, an “American geisha” who gets by socialising with wealthy men.

 

The 1961 film was a very loose adaptation of Capote’s book, transposing the story to 1960 and turning the novella’s unnamed gay narrator into a straight man who falls in love with Golightly.

 

 

Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Golightly and lobbied the studio, Paramount, to hire her, but Monroe was under contract with Twentieth Century Fox at the time. She was reportedly advised to pass because the character would be bad for her image, with her acting coach, Paula Strasberg, saying: “Marilyn Monroe will not play a lady of the evening.”

 

Shirley MacLaine and Kim Novak both turned the role down, and Hepburn was cast against Capote’s wishes. “Paramount double-crossed me in every way and cast Audrey,” he later complained. “It was the most miscast film I’ve ever seen.”

 

Ahead of the film’s release, Paramount’s publicity department desperately attempted to reframe Golightly as being as far from a sex worker as could be. “Since Miss Audrey Hepburn has never played any part that has suggested she was anything but pure, polite and possibly a princess, a hard look at Miss Golightly is in order,” one press release read. Another read: “The star is Audrey Hepburn, not Tawdry Hepburn.”

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s received critical acclaim, making US$14m at the global box office – around $152m today – and winning two Academy Awards: best score for composer Henry Mancini and best song for Moon River, performed by Hepburn in the film.

 

The upcoming movie starring Collins will be the “first complete account of the making of the film” and will cover drama from preproduction to on-set disasters, such as when one crew member was reportedly nearly electrocuted during the film’s famous opening sequence outside the flagship Tiffany & Co store on Fifth Avenue.

 

Casting for other characters in the film, including Capote and Breakfast at Tiffany’s director Blake Edwards, have yet to be announced.

 

Hepburn has previously been played by Jennifer Love Hewitt in the 2000 TV movie The Audrey Hepburn Story. Rooney Mara was briefly attached to a Hepburn biopic directed by Luca Guadagnino, but it was called off in 2023.

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Dawn of the Modern Woman.

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Dawn of the Modern Woman is a non-fiction book by Sam Wasson that chronicles the making of the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's and its profound impact on 20th-century culture. The book explores how the film, led by Audrey Hepburn, transformed the image of the "bad girl" into a modern heroine and paved the way for social changes regarding fashion, sex, and female independence.

 

Book Overview

Central Theme: Wasson examines how the film served as a bridge between the conservative Eisenhower era and the modern 1960s, turning the "not-so-virginal" Holly Golightly into a cultural icon of autonomy.

Production Insights: The book details the challenges of adapting Truman Capote's novella, which featured a lead character who was a call girl, into a Hollywood-approved romantic comedy during a time of strict censorship.

Iconic Figures: The narrative features a cast of real-life characters, including author Truman Capote, director Blake Edwards, costume designer Edith Head, fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy, and composer Henry Mancini.

Key Revelations: According to the New York Public Library Shop, Capote originally wanted Marilyn Monroe for the lead role, and the film's famous happy ending was just one of two versions shot.

Cultural Impact and Legacy

Fashion: The book highlights how the "little black dress" designed by Givenchy became a symbol of self-sufficiency and mysterious power, moving away from the "pastel" aesthetic of the 1950s.

Social Change: Reviewers on Goodreads note that the film was a landmark for depicting a woman having sex without being "punished" by the narrative's end, a radical departure for the time.

Modern Influence: Wasson argues that modern cultural touchstones like Sex and the City owe their existence to the path cleared by Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Upcoming Film: As of February 2026, a movie based on Sam Wasson's book is in development.

Cast: Lily Collins is set to star as Audrey Hepburn and will also serve as a producer.

Production Team: The screenplay is being written by Alena Smith (creator of Dickinson), with production by Imagine Entertainment.

A Profile of Brief Encounter

Brief Encounter

 

Brief Encounter is a 1945 British romantic drama directed by David Lean that is widely considered one of the greatest films in British cinema history. Based on Noël Coward's one-act play Still Life, it tells the story of a chance meeting at a railway station between two married strangers that evolves into a brief but intense emotional affair.

Plot and Setting

The film is primarily told through a flashback narrated by Laura Jesson, a middle-class housewife, as she sits at home with her husband and imagines confessing her secret to him.

The Meeting: Laura (Celia Johnson) meets Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) at the Milford Junction railway station when he helps her remove a piece of grit from her eye.

Development: What begins as a casual acquaintance grows into weekly Thursday meetings involving lunch and trips to the cinema.

The Conflict: Both are happily married with children and feel deep guilt over their growing love, which they realize is "impossible" given their social responsibilities.

The Parting: Their relationship ends when Alec accepts a job in South Africa. Their final goodbye at the station café is painfully interrupted by a talkative acquaintance, Dolly Messiter, preventing them from having a proper farewell.

Cast and Creative Team

The film's impact is often attributed to its understated performances and the masterful collaboration between its creators.

Director: David Lean, who later became famous for grand epics like Lawrence of Arabia, directed this intimate drama with a "masterful" focus on emotional realism.

Screenplay: Written by Noël Coward, Anthony Havelock-Allan, and David Lean, adapting Coward's original 1936 play.

Celia Johnson (Laura Jesson): Her performance, particularly her expressive eyes and "restrained passion," earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Trevor Howard (Dr. Alec Harvey): His portrayal of the "personable" and devoted doctor made him an international star.

Supporting Cast: Includes Stanley Holloway as the ticket inspector and Joyce Carey as the café owner, whose more overt flirtation provides a comic counterpoint to the main leads' repressed romance.

Emotional Restraint: The film is famous for depicting the "stiff upper lip" of the British middle class, where duty and social decorum ultimately triumph over personal desire.

Atmospheric Cinematography: Cinematographer Robert Krasker used shadowy, noir-like lighting and the steam-filled environment of the railway station to mirror the characters' internal turmoil.

Musical Score: Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 is used effectively throughout the film to heighten the sense of romantic yearning and tragedy.

Legacy and Remakes

In 1999, the British Film Institute (BFI) ranked Brief Encounter as the second-greatest British film of all time. It has influenced numerous filmmakers, with directors like Sofia Coppola citing it as an inspiration for Lost in Translation.

1974 Remake: A television movie starring Sophia Loren and Richard Burton was produced but was generally not as well-received as the original.

Stage and Opera: The story has been frequently adapted for the stage and was even turned into an opera in 2009 with music by André Previn.

Deluded Andrew ranted ‘I’m the Queen’s second son' as he was booted out of Royal Lodge

A tale of two brothers: could the Andrew crisis bring down King Charles?

 

Analysis

A tale of two brothers: could the Andrew crisis bring down King Charles?

Stephen Bates

Former prince’s arrest was most damaging event for the family firm in centuries – and the questions keep coming

 

Fri 20 Feb 2026 16.34 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/20/former-prince-andrew-mountbatten-windsor-arrest-king-charles-brothers

 

London fashion week was probably the last public place King Charles III wanted to be on Thursday, admiring the suits and costumes that no one he knows would dream of buying, and making light conversation with designers he would have difficulty in recognising at a royal garden party.

 

Charles must have been contemplating the crumbling of all his plans and hopes for his reign. He always knew it would be short, even before his cancer diagnosis, but he probably never thought it would be upended by the alleged behaviour of his own brother.

 

Thursday was the most consequential and damaging day for the family firm in centuries, perhaps since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, or the capture of King Charles I in 1647 and his execution two years later. Certainly it is worse than Diana’s death and more threatening than the 1936 abdication crisis, because it undermines the institution itself.

 

The Andrew crisis has not been over in a week or a fortnight – it just goes on posing questions, not only containable ones limited to Andrew’s apparent behaviour, but wider ones seeping through whole aspects of the monarchy: its money, its privacy, its unaccountability, its character and, crucially, its popularity with the public.

 

If Charles really did warn their mother about appointing his brother as a trade envoy back in 2001 – if that is not just a piece of retrospective palace spin – why did it take so long for the palace to take action?

 

It must have known about “Airmiles” Andy’s extravagance, freeloading and general boorishness, which has been publicised for years. Did Mountbatten-Windsor’s staff and royal protection officers know of his other alleged proclivities?

 

If they knew and nothing was done, that was taking deference to him and the late queen too far. As Elizabeth well knew, the monarch’s chief duty is to preserve the institution for the succession. She seems to have protected her favourite son and paid at least some of his debts at a cost to Charles’s inheritance.

 

As it is now, every gradual step – the removal of public duties, military ranks, aristocratic and royal titles and the eviction from Royal Lodge – has come too little too late, where earlier it might have staunched the coming flood.

 

In Charles’s statement, rushed out in the wake of his brother’s arrest, not having been told about what was going to happen in advance, he ended with a plaintive reminder of his role: “My family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all.”

 

Hence his appearance at the fashion show, and Princess Anne’s dutiful tour of Leeds prison, ironically, on the same day her brother was in police custody.

 

In the circumstances, Charles’s assertion that the law must take its course was the least he could say: he can scarcely try to hide Andrew from prosecution as earlier monarchs did in less intrusive, pre-social media ages.

 

If the case ever comes to trial, Mountbatten-Windsor will be appearing in the king’s court, in front of a judge sitting under the royal coat of arms. If convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, he will serve time at His Majesty’s pleasure.

 

Again, any such eventuality is a long way off.

 

Duty and service are two lodestars that Andrew apparently failed to observe. “I’m not doing this trade envoy business for my own good,” he told an interviewer in 2010. His own good seems precisely what he was trying to do.

 

The king’s mind at the fashion show must have been elsewhere, probably 100 miles away in Sandringham where, at Wood Farm on the Norfolk estate, his brother had been rooted out by plainclothes police officers at 8am – over breakfast? In his pyjamas? – to be cautioned and arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, alleged to have passed on confidential information about business opportunities gathered ostensibly for the British government.

 

Normally such investigations into a difficult crime to prove take months, if not years – this one still might – and involve junior officials and police constables, not the man who is still eighth in line to the British throne.

 

The former prince spent most of the rest of his 66th birthday being questioned by detectives at Aylesham police station. When he was released to be driven back to the farm in the early evening, Mountbatten-Windsor, far from his usual appearance of arrogant and complacent disdain, looked shell-shocked and frankly scared, an eye glowing red in a camera flash’s glare, as he sought to slump down as far as he could in the rear passenger seat.

 

It was the equivalent of what the Americans call the Perp Walk. The picture, which went round the world in minutes, has already taken its place in a growing gallery of royal portraits, alongside that of the former prince with his hand around Virginia Giuffre’s waist in 2001 and poised lubriciously and sweatily over a recumbent female figure at some unknown date, released in the most recent tranche of the Epstein files.

 

We cannot of course know what was going through Mountbatten-Windsor’s mind on Thursday. It must be uncomfortable to realise that, thanks to the Epstein files, many of the things he said to Emily Maitlis in his notorious BBC interview in 2019 – the one he thought had gone so well at the time – seem to have been proven untrue. He did not end his association with Epstein – in fact he knew him rather well. He did know Virginia Giuffre. He can sweat.

 

Did he even go to Pizza Express in Woking?

 

It is one of the ironies of the whole scandal so far that the release of the files has had a greater effect in Britain than it has in the US. The only person so far convicted is Ghislaine Maxwell, who is British. Meanwhile Donald Trump is insisting he has been totally exonerated; so totally that he keeps repeating it.

 

 

In the US it is a political football, in the UK it is a constitutional one. It may be the first time US lawmakers have ever praised the British police and legal system.

 

Hanging over all this, and so far unaddressed, is what happened to the young women trafficked by Epstein, some of them allegedly sent to England in a private jet to meet the then prince.

 

If that is the case, what happened at Stansted and Luton airports when the jet and its personnel landed? Were the passports checked, were questions asked (“Where are you staying?”) or were they just waved through?

 

The former prime minister Gordon Brown has written to numerous police authorities in the past week asking for an investigation. Presumably no one further down the chain noticed, or took an interest at the time.

 

And what of Mountbatten-Windsor’s extant roles? He is indubitably eighth in line to the throne and he remains a counsellor of state with the potential to stand in for the monarch in their absence.

 

Neither is remotely likely to come to pass. The first would require a sort of Kind Hearts and Coronets scenario, with the king and the next seven in line – William and his children, George, Charlotte and Louis, and Prince Harry and his two, Archie and Lilibet – to be wiped out first (there is a reason they don’t travel by air together).

 

Similarly, Andrew would never be called upon in any circumstance now to perform a royal duty. But still. After the fuss the palace made about how difficult it would be to remove Andrew’s titles and then how easily it was done, his removal could be waved through even if it required parliament to do it.

 

The palace always pores over its own opinion polls to gauge its continuing popularity, and public polls have marked a decline in recent months. Ipsos shows 25% saying it would be better for the monarchy to be abolished, up 10% in 10 years. Asked whether the monarchy will survive, 50% believe there won’t be one in 50 years.

 

When one asks even firm monarchists about the situation, they nervously respond that they hope the Andrew scandal doesn’t damage the crown. Very, very few seem to feel sorry for him, while very many think he has brought the trouble on himself.

 

The monarchy is not rocking yet, though a lot of hopes rest on Prince William. People, particularly the older generation, still like the pageantry and the street parties, but another serious scandal would push the family nearer the exit. The age of deference is past, and questions of accountability need to be answered.

 

To paraphrase the Victorian constitutionalist Walter Bagehot, the full glare of public scrutiny needs uncomfortably to be let in on the magic.

 

Stephen Bates is a former Guardian royal correspondent. His books include The Shortest History of the Crown and Royalty Inc. Britain’s Best-Known Brand.

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