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
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: Talents, Abilities, Work, Life and Living
Only the really plain people know about love—the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they very soon exhaust their talents.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Love
Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Marriage
If you survive long enough, you are revered, rather like an old building.
—Katharine Hepburn
If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Fun, Happiness
Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Acting
Life is hard. After all, it kills you.
—Katharine Hepburn
What you see before you is the result of a lifetime of chocolate.
—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: Resolve, Perseverance, Endurance
I was born lucky, and I have lived lucky. What I had was used. What I still have is being used. Lucky.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Luck, Fortune
To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Character
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
Topics: Hollywood
As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Work
Enemies are so stimulating.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Enemy, Enemies
Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Actors, Acting
If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Time Management, Happiness, Enjoyment, Value of Time
I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret … if you have any sense; and, if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Remorse, Disappointment, Regret
Plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Men, Opportunities, Reality
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff of the neck.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Character, Courage, Ability
If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Actors, Audiences, Acting
Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get –
only what you are expecting to give – which is everything.
What you will receive in return varies, but it really has
no connection with what you give. You give because you love
and cannot help giving. If you are very lucky, you may be
loved back. That is delicious but it does not necessarily happen.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Love, Kindness, Success
We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers—you can blame anyone, but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you want to change, you’re the one who has got to change. It’s as simple as that, isn’t it?
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Confidence, Self-reliance
If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.
—Katharine Hepburn
It’s a business you go into because you’re an egocentric. It’s a very embarrassing profession.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Acting, Actors
You can’t change the music of your soul.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Soul
Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Power
If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Marriage, Admiration, Sacrifice
My greatest strength is… common sense. I’m really a standard brand—like Campbell’s tomato soup or Baker’s chocolate.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Common Sense
Without discipline, there’s no life at all.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Discipline, Self-Control
I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.
—Katharine Hepburn
Topics: Gossip
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