Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) was one of the best and most popular Hollywood actresses of the twentieth century. She won four Academy Awards and was nominated for eight more. Her films included Bringing Up Baby (1938,) The African Queen (1951,) Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967,) and On Golden Pond (1981.)
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Hepburn graduated from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She made her Broadway début when she was 21 and her Hollywood début in A Bill of Divorcement (1932) when she was 25. After achieving fame, she insisted on having a say in which other actors would be in her movies. She often rephrased her lines—something that few other actresses had ventured to do at that time.
Hepburn played an attractive, smart, independent, and confident woman who got what she wanted. On- and off-screen, she gained a reputation as a smart aleck, but also refined and charismatic. She did nothing archetypal Hollywood stars do—she didn’t wear make-up, didn’t accommodate the media, and had a habit of insulting other individuals in the show business.
Hepburn’s memoirs, Me: Stories of My Life (1991,) were a best-seller. She wrote about her twenty-seven-year affair with Spencer Tracy, her career, and life in her brownstone at the heart of Manhattan, where she resided for sixty years.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Katharine Hepburn
I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Gossip
Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Power
Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Acting
The average Hollywood film star’s ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.
—Katharine Hepburn
I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Endurance, Resolve, Perseverance
If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Happiness
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Romance, Men, Humanity, Women, Men & Women
Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don’t do that by sitting around wondering about yourself.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Work, Abilities, Talents, Life and Living
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff of the neck.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Ability, Character, Courage
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