It’s technically a small part of the movie, only appearing briefly and sporadically, but each time the character arrives, it’s like a sledgehammer swung across the screen. How could they not fall for Hepburn’s iconic performance, which Malone still describes as luminous? “Holly Golightly is a complex female character, and for the times it was quite sexually progressive.” Yet there was always another element, even in those halcyon days, which Malone recognized as uncomfortable-that discomfort has only grown to modern eyes.īeyond the movie’s bittersweet romance between a pseudo-call girl and the kept man living in the apartment upstairs, there’s a grossly racist caricature of Japanese Americans in the movie’s margins, and it’s portrayed no less than by Mickey Rooney in yellowface makeup. “I thought for sure people were going to get excited about classic movies if they watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s because it has so much life to it!” Malone says today. Seeing it more times than she can remember in her native Australia, the future author and Turner Classic Movies host still recalls failed attempts to launch a high school film club with Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly as the star attraction. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a movie Alicia Malone fell head over heels in love with during childhood.
