After seeing George Cukor's 1964 film, My Fair Lady, an adaptation of the 1913 play Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, I absolutely adored Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn plays Eliza Doolittle, a dirty cockney flower girl with a dream of becoming more. I would absolutely love to portray this character for a number of reasons.
The aspect that draws me to this role the most is the evolution of the character. Eliza is not a person that stays the same throughout but instead blooms into a very charming and proper lady. One sees her start at the bottom of the social chain and struggle very hard to climb her way up, reaching higher than she had ever dreamed.
There are many characters that we have seen throughout this class that transform and develop into very complex roles; however, I really enjoy doing comedy because it is just so much fun. Eliza would be so much fun to create as an actor because she is intelligent but untrained, beautiful but rough around the edges, and vulnerable yet headstrong. An old cliché, a diamond in the rough, fits her to a tee.
I really enjoyed Hepburn's performance as Eliza; however, I was very disappointed when I saw that Marni Nixon sang the vocals for her character. In fact, many of the actors in the movie had vocal doubles. This must rarely be the case for Hollywood in modern times. If an actor cannot do everything a role requires, minus a few stunts, then there are a slew of other eager thespians drooling to take their place. If modern Hollywood standards were in place during the casting of My Fair Lady, I wonder how the casting would have differed.
If I were so fortunate as to portray this role, I would want to sing the vocals also. Audrey Hepburn is lucky to be able to act before the time of "triple
threats." This is a term to refer to entertainers who can act, sing, and dance. We have seen numerous actors that fall into this category, playing in such films as Moulin Rouge and Chicago.