Costume Designer Exposes Hollywood Stars Dishonorable Actions

They are not the sort of crude insults you'd ever expect to hear leveled at Audrey Hepburn.

But Hollywood costume designer Jean-Pierre Dorléac, 82, says the late movie icon famed for her graceful gentility deserves all his acidic barbs - and then some.

'She was a conniving b*tch - and she was crookeder than hell,' the Oscar-nominated movie veteran said of the Breakfast at Tiffany's star in a riotous interview with the Daily Mail. 

Dorléac's loathing of Hepburn, who died of in 1993 aged 63, began after the ambassador double-crossed his acclaimed mentor Edith Head while preparing to shoot classic 1954 romcom Sabrina.

'Edith said [Audrey] changed one costume 73 times within a matter of an hour,'  Dorléac explained, recalling the women's rough start. 'She was very evasive and uncooperative and indecisive about everything.'

'Her mind was evidently elsewhere and she dismissed Edith as though she were a charwoman.'

Hepburn then flew to Paris to beg designer Hubert de Givenchy for outfits behind Head's back, said Dorléac, who has written a fascinating book on his life called The Naked Truth.

'She showed up unknown, and he had no idea who she was. She cooed her way into looking at his collection, and said, if he would loan her this and loan her that, and so forth...'

Hepburn arrived back in the United States with a single black suit loaned to her by Givenchy. 

Head was keen to accommodate Hepburn's vision for her character's clothing. She agreed to create a wardrobe inspired by the Paris fashion house, Dorléac said, including a now-legendary black ball gown worn by Sabrina in a key scene. 

But Hepburn threw the act of generosity back in Head's face when asked who had designed the frock during an interview with a journalist, Dorléac revealed.

'Audrey Hepburn turned around and told the press that her dearest friend, Givenchy, had loaned her all these clothes, and she had brought them back from Paris...

'Audrey Hepburn did not bring back anything but one suit from Paris.

'She lied, and she ruined Edith's reputation by claiming to do this, that she got all this stuff from her good friend only so she could get in with Givenchy and get free clothes from him for the rest of her career. 

'She ruined Edith's career, and that's why I have absolutely no kind words for that c***.'

Despite Dorléac's claim, Head went on to win an Oscar for her work on Sabrina.

Head died in 1981 aged 83, with Dorléac encountering Hepburn 'many times' in the ensuing years.

He said: 'She was very neurotic. Very, very undependable and kept people waiting forever because of her.'

Asked if Hepburn was kind, Dorléac immediately answered 'No.'

He said she smelled bad because of an eating disorder and accused her of further falsehoods on his X account, writing: 'She made up so many stories for PR about what she went through in WWII.

'She didn't starve as a child like she claims, she was anorexic. All you had to do was spend some time with her, and see she was like a jumping bean.

'She was always on amphetamines.' 

Like Hepburn, Dorléac was born in Europe, spending his childhood in Toulon, France. 

He began his career as an actor but found himself fascinated by clothing and successfully transitioned to costume design in the 1970s with a move to Los Angeles. He has remained in the city ever since.

Dorléac's career soon took off with a slew of plum jobs on film and TV. He won Emmy Awards for his work on Battlestar Galactica and was nominated for an Oscar for the 1980 Midwestern-set romantic period drama Somewhere in Time.

It was on the set of that movie that he encountered Christopher Plummer, another acting legend adored by millions who Dorléac said was actually a monster. 

'It was a very difficult film,' Dorléac said. 'Christopher Plummer was a major pain in the ass. Vitriolic and not a nice man.'

Dorléac explained that Plummer, best known for playing Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, would sneer that his costume was historically inaccurate. 

'I went and bought him wonderful silks for $175 a yard that were from Italy, that were perfect for the period for summer in 1912 and he looked at them and fingered them like I had handed him a piece of sh*t, and said, "Oh, my father didn't wear these in the summertime."'

Dorléac said Plummer continued to be an 'a**hole' for the remainder of the production and that the actor was 'horrendous' when they were reunited for 1986 movie The Boss' Wife. Plummer died in 2021 aged 91. 

The costume designer had sharper words still for Raquel Welch, who he dressed for a cameo awards ceremony scene in the 1994 comedy Naked Gun 33 1/3. 

'She changed the style of her dress about 400 times,' Dorléac said of Welch, who died in 2023 at the age of 82. 

'Three times we ordered fabric from Italy that was, like, $300 a yard, and she changed her mind on that.

'She had them change the curtains in the set three times. She wanted to wear a gold dress, and then she found the curtains were gold. And (the crew) changed them to red, and then she wanted to wear a red dress.'

Warming to his theme, Dorléac continued: 'She was a selfish, mean little pr*ck - and she was short. 

'She was four two, and she had t*ts on her that hung down to her knees.

'She wouldn't wear any undergarments at all, and she needed support terribly to lift them up, and everything you had to design for her had a halter top in it to lift them like a crane. 

'She was impossible, impossible. Oh, God, I can't say enough awful things about how unprofessional she was.'

Another Golden Age of Hollywood icon, Kirk Douglas, displayed a vile high-handedness while filming 1969 western There Was a Crooked Man in the scorching Mojave Desert, Dorléac said.

'After a grueling work week in the hot sun of Arizona Kirk made the grips build a white picket fence around his motorhome in the middle of the day on Sunday, the one day the entire crew had off,' he explained. 

'It was superfluous decor for such a short time there, but he didn't care in the slightest and insisted the guys work for nothing and build this picket fence when there was nothing but shrub and cactus to be seen for miles. 

'He wasn't trying to keep anything in or out. He just wanted it for his own ego's sake.' 

Dorléac said the worst performer he's ever worked with is actress Suzanne Pleshette, who starred in The Bob Newhart Show and died in 2008 aged 70. 

The costume designer said Pleshette exploded on realizing a top handmade by Dorléac displayed her uneven nipples, ripping the $700 garment off in an unhinged fury.

Told that she could see a plastic surgeon to fix the problem, Pleshette is said to have screamed that she would 'never let some f**king doctor take a knife to me.'

But Dorléac said he'd already noticed that Pleshette's ears and neck were crisscrossed with multiple face and necklift scars while helping her into the offending outfit. 

'What a hypocrite,' he deadpanned, adding that Pleshette would constantly steal $35 pairs of pantyhose from the set they were working on. 

Dorléac says he met many wonderful stars during his decades in Hollywood, including Fred Astaire ('charming and secure in his talents') Kim Cattrall ('adorable') Bette Davis ('wonderful') and Elizabeth Taylor. 

Even Taylor wasn't spared Dorléac's barbs though, as he revealed the late acting icon famed for owning hundreds of millions of dollars of jewelry would send her underwear bills to Aids charity amFAR. 

'They all feel entitled,' he said. 'Elizabeth Taylor, despite what all these people say, that she was so benevolent, gave her time for Aids, I know people who worked at Saks Fifth Avenue who told me about what kind of bills she ran up for her, personally, that was all charged off to amFAR. 

'It was for her underwear, her bras and her panties and her stockings and her shoes and her handbags and her dresses and her own perfumes she would get there and get them free.' Taylor died in 2011 aged 79.

Dorléac speaks with the refreshing honesty of a man who got to the very top of his ritzy Hollywood profession through sheer hard work - and who is now determined to slaughter some of the movie industry's most sacred cows. 

'Just because somebody is good looking does not mean they're talented,' he said

'It does not mean they're kind. It doesn't mean they're wonderful. It doesn't mean it's somebody you want to have coffee with.'