Audrey Hepburn’s BaZi: Spring Earth and the Road from War to Broadway

Audrey Hepburn was born in Brussels and spent her childhood and teenage years in the Netherlands, living through the Nazi occupation and the famine winter of 1944. Her chart is Ji-Si, Wu-Chen, Ji-You, Yi-Chou (己巳 戊辰 己酉 乙丑): Ji Earth (soft, fertile field earth) born in the late-spring Chen month, with Si, You and Chou combining into Metal. Our engine reads it as balanced; Wealth is unfavorable, and her Zi Wei Wealth Palace is empty too. After the war she worked as a chorus girl in London. At 22 the French writer Colette spotted her and had her cast in Gigi on Broadway, and two years later she won an Oscar for Roman Holiday.

Birth data: a birth certificate

Belgium went onto summer time in late April 1929, with clocks an hour ahead, so we first subtract 60 minutes. Brussels lies 4.4° east of Greenwich, so the true sun runs another seventeen minutes ahead, and the early-May equation of time adds three more. The result is 2:21: on the clock it was the Yin hour, but in solar time it falls back into the Chou hour. This is the time on her birth certificate, and we use it as is.

Four Pillars and Ten Gods

Our strength engine scores season, roots, visible stems, Resource and companions against Wealth, Officer and Output; below 0.35 reads weak, above 0.55 reads strong.

A score of 0.442: balanced. The Ji Earth is in season and has plenty of companions, but the Metal combination of Si, You and Chou drains off a large part of Earth’s strength, so it never becomes strong. The favorable elements are Fire (Resource) and Earth (companions); the unfavorable ones are Water (Wealth) and Wood (Officer).

An Output combination is the most distinctive feature of this chart. Output is the way a person puts themselves out into the world, and a combined Metal Output was often read by the old writers as refinement: delicacy, discernment, taste. She trained in ballet from childhood and became a fashion icon for generations, which sits close to that reading. But with Wealth faint and a single Yi Wood Officer, the birth chart alone gives no sign that she would become one of Hollywood’s defining stars.

Before and after emigrating: from the famine winter to the Oscars

For a woman born in a yin year (the year stem Ji is yin), the luck pillars run forwards, starting at age 2.

“fav / unfav” reads the stem first, then the branch: whether each one’s element is favorable (useful), unfavorable, or neither (neutral) for this chart.

Her breakthrough years, 1950–1959, fall in the Xin-Wei luck pillar: the stem Xin Metal is Eating God (neutral), the branch Wei Earth is Friend (favorable). It is not an outstanding pillar, but the direction is clear: Eating God on the stem lets her talent be seen, and Wei Earth supports the Day Master so she can carry the sudden flood of fame. In 1954, at 25, she won both the Academy Award for Best Actress and a Tony.

To be honest, her luck pillars do not line up with the peaks of her life as neatly as Cary Grant’s. The war and the famine fall in the Geng-Wu pillar, which is neutral / favorable, while her biggest hits, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and My Fair Lady, fall in the Ren-Shen pillar, whose stem is unfavorable. We list it as it is.

A few key years

1944 is Jia-Shen: the stem Jia Wood, Direct Officer, is unfavorable, and it was the hardest year of her life. 1988 is Wu-Chen, Earth in both stem and branch, fully favorable; that year she took on the UNICEF role and devoted the rest of her life to children in war and famine zones. A child who lived through famine went back, at the end, to help children living through famine. That is her life, not something a chart calculated; we simply set the year pillar beside it.

When you change country, does your destiny change too?

Hepburn is the fourth in the “moving abroad” group, and her move came in two stages: from the Netherlands to London after the war, then from London to New York and Hollywood. Our position is the same as on the other pages: BaZi records the moment of birth, and moving does not change it. The more defensible reading is that post-war London and New York were hungry for new faces, and Broadway and Hollywood gave her a stage that pre-war Europe could not.

Where does the chart miss her real life?

Zi Wei Dou Shu chart

The same birth time, cast in Zi Wei Dou Shu (San He school, the same engine as our Zi Wei chart tool, using the same true solar time as the BaZi chart above). BaZi weighs the five elements and what the chart favors; Zi Wei looks at which stars fall in which palace. The two systems ask different questions, so the Zi Wei chart is shown on its own first, followed by where it agrees and disagrees with the BaZi reading.

The gold frame is the Life Palace; the shaded palaces are its three-sides-and-four-directions (Wealth, Career, Travel). Solid badges are the birth-year transformations (Lu, Quan, Ke, Ji), red names are the six malefic stars, and the small word after a major star is its brightness.

Hepburn’s Zi Wei birth chart has Tian Fu in the Life Palace (the Mao palace). The Wealth Palace is empty, holding only Tian Ma and Ling Xing; Tian Xiang is in the Career Palace, and the opposite Travel Palace holds Wu Qu with Lu and Qi Sha. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Greta Garbo in this series, it is the “Tian Fu in the Life Palace, empty Wealth Palace, powerful opposite palace” combination. Tian Fu is steady and cultivated, a good match for the elegance people saw in her. But there are no auspicious stars in the Life Palace and the Wealth Palace is empty; the birth chart alone is not a chart of wealth and renown.

With the other birth-time versions, the Zi Wei chart becomes:

In BaZi the hour pillar changes every two hours while the day pillar and above stay put. In Zi Wei the Life Palace is set by the lunar month and the hour, so a different hour moves the Life Palace, the Body Palace, the bureau and every major star at once. The same dispute over a birth hour therefore usually matters more for Zi Wei than for BaZi.

Following the popular online method of “recasting in local time when you move”, converting her moment of birth to New York time lands in the Hai hour on the previous evening, and the Zi Wei chart becomes Wu Qu with Lu and Po Jun in the Life Palace, Lian Zhen and Qi Sha (brilliant) in the Wealth Palace, and Zi Wei with Tan Lang Quan in the Career Palace. Life, Wealth and Career form Sha-Po-Lang once more, and the emperor star Zi Wei moves into the Career Palace. It looks very much like an actress who became an overnight sensation on Broadway and in Hollywood and won an Oscar. But she was born in Brussels; New York clock time is just another way of writing the same instant. This is picking a chart after knowing the outcome: an after-the-fact calculation, for entertainment only.

For school, leap-month and Zi-hour settings see the Zi Wei chart page; for how the two systems differ see BaZi vs Zi Wei Dou Shu. The hindsight warning applies here too: once you know the outcome, any star can be made to explain it.

Western astrology chart

The same moment of birth, cast as a Western natal chart (tropical zodiac, Placidus houses, the same engine as our natal chart tool). A natal chart uses the sky at the moment of birth, so it needs no true-solar-time correction, but it does need the latitude of the birthplace to fix the Ascendant and the houses. BaZi and Zi Wei are both derived from the Chinese calendar, while a natal chart computes planetary positions directly. Because the three systems start from different places, the chart is listed on its own below, followed by where it agrees with the BaZi and Zi Wei readings.

Sun in Taurus, Moon in Pisces, Aquarius rising. The Moon falls in the 1st house, which astrology reads as feelings written on the face and a quality that makes people want to protect you, close to her delicate, vulnerable screen image. The chart ruler, Saturn, is in its own sign of Capricorn and in the 10th house (career); the traditional reading is a career built on self-discipline and long accumulation, and her later devotion to UNICEF is a Saturnine kind of responsibility too. Note that her Ascendant is at 28° Aquarius; a birth just 3 minutes later would give Pisces rising, so this point rests on the time on her birth certificate. BaZi reads her as balanced Ji Earth favoring Fire and Earth, and Earth’s practicality points the same way as a Taurus Sun.

Domicile, exaltation, fall and detriment in brackets are the classical categories for how comfortably a planet works in a sign; they are not verdicts of good or bad. For how to read the big three, the ten planets and aspects, see rising sign, Moon sign, the ten planets and aspects. The hindsight warning applies here too: once you know the outcome, any sign can be made to explain it.

Does your chart have an Output combination?

The Four Pillars, strength score and luck pillars on this page all come from the same engine as the chart on our home page. Enter your birth date to see whether your Eating God and Hurting Officer form a combination, whether your Day Master is strong or weak, and which elements are favorable for you. You can also look at the other people in this series who made their name abroad: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cary Grant, Greta Garbo and Rudolph Valentino.