Sir Roger Moore - "Audrey Hepburn deceived me into being a Goodwill Ambassador"

Sir Roger Moore said his praise for the late Audrey Hepburn. "Audrey got me into the whole UNICEF situation because for me all I had was statistics without faces. What I had to do was go into the field as a member of UNICEF. So that's what I did , I signed up."

This is from BBC Breakfast With Frost Interview with Roger Moore on Sunday 15 June 2003.

DAVID FROST:"How did the relationship begin with UNICEF, Roger, was it 1991"?

ROGER MOORE: "Yes, Audrey Hepburn asked me if I would co-host some International Awards from Amsterdam, she said would you come on the day before the Awards. So I said, why Audrey, if we're going to read it off a crawl. She said, no I want you over, a press conference. I said, but I don't know enough about UNICEF to handle a press conference. She said don't worry, they only want to talk about movies, so it'll be fine. And she was right, they only wanted to talk about movies but she would not let them. She spoke with tremendous passion about the plight of children. She would never let them get back to movies, she kept on the issues that were facing children then and which still face children today. Terrible statistics, 40,000 children dying a day at that time. Have we gone forward? We've reduced it yes by 28,000 so we've saved some, but it's not enough, we've got to save more and that's why I have been working these last 12 years and with Christine at my side we travel the world, visiting various projects, water projects, health projects and also fundraising awareness, raising money for elimination of iodine deficiency disorders, which I'm sure you know what that is. The lack of, all we need in our lifetime is one teaspoonful of iodine spread out through our life. If we don't have that then we can miss our IQ by ten per cent, we could be born cretins, we could be still-born. We could be born suffering with dwarfism and this is one of the things that we work on a great deal throughout the world".

In 2004 Roger made this comment about Audrey Hepburn Sir Roger Moore, told how Audrey Hepburn deceived him into becoming involved with UNICEF. Inviting him to join a press conference, she convinced him that the press wanted to talk to him about his films, "But she didn’t allow them to talk about films. She wanted to talk about children."

Sir Roger was also at the United Nations Special Session on the Rights of the Child for the unveiling of a statue of Audrey Hepburn, the former Goodwill Ambassador and in his capacity as current Goodwill Ambassador.

Roger talked about how Hepburn inspired him to work with children, "She spoke with great passion", he said, "She was an exceedingly eloquent and persuasive lady."

Roger quickly become more involved. "I read that 40,000 children die a day - but that there were no names. I wanted to put names to those statistics."

Roger has now visited many areas of the world on UNICEF business. Speaking on his reactions to the poverty he has seen he said, "There is a sense of guilt that I should have so much and they don't. The disparity between the wealthy and the poor is quite horrendous."

Roger talks of children who are blind because of lack of vitamin A or suffering malnutrition, saying, "You see these things and you say, 'My God, we've got to do something about this.'"

Roger also expresses his frustration about the Roman Catholic's approach to birth control, "UNICEF is not political, but you have to say what you feel. I'm not Catholic and I disagree on a number of occasions about birth control. Talking about visiting mud huts inhabited by women who have been abandoned by their husbands, he says, "I have been to far too many huts where I have seen Madonnas on the wall.. maybe 9 or 10 children in a family and a macho husband who has left and will go off to procreate another 10." Sir Roger Moore.

For five years, until her death in 1993, Audrey devoted all her energy to working with UNICEF. Her field missions were often physically and emotionally demanding and sometimes undertaken at great personal risk.

Audrey learned first hand about the plight of poor and displaced children in countries all over the world. Audrey made over fifty field research visits to UNICEF-assisted projects in Sudan, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia. . These trips enabled her to witness first-hand the distressing conditions of children living in war-torn and drought-ridden areas of the world. Determined to raise awareness and badly needed funds, Audrey applied her first-hand knowledge to inform Special Assemblies at the U.N., shared details with various Press Associations, and lobbied on behalf of children to World Parliaments.

In 1993, Sean H. Ferrer, Luca Dotti (Audrey's sons) and Robert Wolders (her companion) created The Audrey Hepburn Memorial Fund at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to commemorate the humanitarian efforts she made as a UNICEF International Goodwill Ambassador.

To date, the Audrey Hepburn Memorial Fund at UNICEF has raised over $1 million dollars for educational programs in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan and Somalia.

7 May 2002 - A seven-foot-tall bronze statue of Audrey Hepburn was unveiled today in a star-studded ceremony at the James P. Grant Plaza at UNICEF headquarters in New York to commemorate Ms. Hepburn's tireless work as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Here for the story