AWARDS AND HONORS

Roman Holiday was selected in 1999 for inclusion in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.

Roman Holiday received ten Academy Award nominations. It won 3. Audrey Hepburn won for Best Actress, Edith Head won for Best Costume Design, and Ian McLellan Hunter won for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story. In 1993 the film's rightful author, Dalton Trumbo, was awarded an Oscar posthumously for the screenplay.

BAFTA awarded Audrey Hepburn with honors as Best British Actress for her role in Roman Holiday. BAFTA also nominated Roman Holiday for Best Film, and nominated both Gregory Peck and Eddie Albert for Best Foreign Actor.

William Wyler was nominated by the Directors Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures.

Audrey Hepburn won a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Drama.

The New York Film Critics Circle named Audrey Hepburn Best Actress for her performance.

The screenplay won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) award for Best Written American Comedy.

The American Film Institute named Roman Holiday #4 on its list of the top 100 Greatest Love Stories of All Time.

. THE CRITIC'S CORNER

"Call Roman Holiday a credit to William Wyler's versatility...Audrey Hepburn...is a slender, elfin and wistful beauty, alternately regal and childlike in her profound appreciation of newly-found simple pleasures and love...Gregory Peck makes a stalwart and manly escort and lover." – The New York Times.

"Paramount has a winner in this William Wyler romantic comedy-drama...Wyler used the ancient buildings and streets of Rome as a colorful and beautiful backdrop...He times the chuckles with a never-flagging pace, puts heart into the laughs, endows the footage with some off bits of business and points up some tender, poignant scenes in using the smart script and the cast to the utmost advantage." -- Variety.

"Charming...Probably no one could have brought out her [Hepburn's] skinny, long-necked gamine magic as winningly as the director William Wyler did; his calm, elegant style prepares the scenes and builds the character until she has the audience in thrall, and when she smiles we're all goners...The plot is banal, and the movie is no more than a Cinderella-style romantic comedy, but it's enough." - Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies.

"...entertaining romantic comedy..." - Georges Sadoul, Dictionary of Films.

"Wispy, charming, old-fashioned romantic comedy shot in Rome and a little obsessed by the locations; one feels that a studio base would have resulted in firmer control of the elements. The stars, however, made it memorable." - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide.

"While Capra, or in a different way Lubitsch, could have made something wholly enjoyable from it, it would seem that Wyler's technique is now too ponderously inflexible for such lightweight material." - MFB (Monthly Film Bulletin).

"Utterly charming." - Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide.

"Filmed entirely in Rome, the location does rather dominate the movie. But within time the mix of silly comedy and innocent love turns the viewer into a willing tourist. It's a trip that's over all too soon, but is a delightful escape for all concerned." - BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/films/

"William Wyler's 1953 reverse-Cinderella story Roman Holiday also spends as much time exploring a European wonderland as it spends advancing its plot, though in Wyler's case, the story is in the exploring...Wyler, working from a script by blacklistee Dalton Trumbo, lets much of the film pass without dialogue, allowing Hepburn's immediate reactions (as enchantingly passionate now as they were 50 years ago, in what was her Hollywood debut) and her increasing physical closeness to Peck say what the characters can't. The leisurely pace of Roman Holiday also allows for plenty of touristy gawking at the sights of Rome, and for viewers to project themselves into the sidewalk cafés, gelato stands, and crumbling ruins." - Noel Murray, The Onion A.V. Club.

"The film's bittersweet story is a charming romantic-comedy, a kind of Cinderella tale in reverse (with an April-October romance)...The story was reportedly based on the real-life Italian adventures of British Princess Margaret." - Tim Dirks, The Greatest Films, www.filmsite.org/

Compiled by Andrea Passafiume & Jeff Stafford