Born May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, she was the daughter of a doctor and a suffragette, both of whom always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a child, she was also very close to her brother, Tom, and was devastated at age 14 to find him dead, the apparent result of accidentally hanging himself while practicing a hanging trick their father had taught them. For many years after this, Katharine used his birthdate, November 8, as her own. She then became very shy around girls her age, and was largely schooled at home. She did attend Bryn Mawr College, however, and it was here that she decided to become an actress, appearing in many of their productions.

After graduating, she began getting small roles in plays on Broadway and elsewhere. She always attracted attention in these parts, especially for her role in "Art and Mrs. Bottle" (1931); then, she finally broke into stardom when she took the starring role of the Amazon princess Antiope in "A Warrior's Husband" (1932). The inevitable film offers followed, and after making a few screen tests, she was cast in A Bill of Divorcement, opposite John Barrymore. The film was a hit, and after agreeing to her salary demands, RKO signed her to a contract. She made five films between 1932 and 1934. For her third, Morning Glory she won her first Academy Award. Her fourth, Little Women was the most successful picture of its day.

But stories were beginning to leak out of her haughty behavior off- screen and her refusal to play the Hollywood Game, always wearing slacks and no makeup, never posing for pictures or giving interviews. Audiences were shocked at her unconventional behavior instead of applauding it, and so when she returned to Broadway in 1934 to star in "The Lake", the critics panned her and the audiences, who at first bought up tickets, soon deserted her. When she returned to Hollywood, things didn't get much better. From the period 1935-1938, she had only two hits: Alice Adams, which brought her her second Oscar nomination, and Stage Door; the many flops included Break of Hearts, Sylvia Scarlett, Mary of Scotland, Quality Street and the now- classic Bringing Up Baby.

With so many flops, she came to be labeled "box-office poison." She decided to go back to Broadway to star in "The Philadelphia Story" (1938), and was rewarded with a smash. She quickly bought the film rights, and so was able to negotiate her way back to Hollywood on her own terms, including her choice of director and co-stars. The film version of The Philadelphia Story, was a box-office hit, and Hepburn, who won her third Oscar nomination for the film, was bankable again. For her next film, Woman of the Year, she was paired with Spencer Tracy, and the chemistry between them lasted for eight more films, spanning the course of 25 years, and a romance that lasted that long off-screen. (She received her fourth Oscar nomination for the film.) Their films included the very successful Adam's Rib, Pat and Mike, and Desk Set.

With The African Queen, Hepburn moved into middle-aged spinster roles, receiving her fifth Oscar nomination for the film. She played more of these types of roles throughout the 50s, and won more Oscar nominations for many of them, including her roles in Summertime, The Rainmaker and Suddenly, Last Summer. Her film roles became fewer and farther between in the 60s, as she devoted her time to her ailing partner Spencer Tracy. For one of her film appearances in this decade, in Long Day's Journey Into Night, she received her ninth Oscar nomination. After a five-year absence from films, she then made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, her last film with Tracy and the last film Tracy ever made; he died just weeks after finishing it. It garnered Hepburn her tenth Oscar nomination and her second win. The next year, she did The Lion in Winter, which brought her her eleventh Oscar nomination and third win.

In the 70s, she turned to making made-for-TV films, with The Glass Menagerie, Love Among the Ruins and The Corn Is Green. She still continued to make an occasional appearance in feature films, such as Rooster Cogburn, with John Wayne, and On Golden Pond, with Henry Fonda. This last brought her her twelfth Oscar nomination and fourth win - the latter currently still a record for an actress.

She made more TV-films in the 80s, and wrote her autobiography, 'Me', in 1991. Her last feature film was Love Affair, with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and her last TV- film was One Christmas. With her health declining she retired from public life in the mid-nineties. She died at the age of 96 at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.



Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967): $200,000
The African Queen (1951): $130,000 + 10% of profits
Woman of the Year (1942): $250,000
The Philadelphia Story (1940): $75,000 + $175,000 for the rights
Holiday (1938): $1,500/week
Sylvia Scarlett (1935): $1,500/week + $50,000
Spitfire (1934): $60,000
A Bill of Divorcement (1932): $1,500/week

Graduated from Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1928, with a degree in history and philosophy. She never watched Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) because it was Spencer Tracy's last film. Walked around the studio in her underwear in the early 1930s when the costume department stole her slacks from her dressing room. She refused to put anything else on until they were returned. A leading contender for Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), she later served as Maid of Honor at Vivien Leigh's and Laurence Olivier's wedding. Ranked #68 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997] Aunt of actress Katharine Houghton, who portrayed her character's daughter in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). Does not suffer from Parkinson's disease. She set the record straight in the 1993 TV documentary Katharine Hepburn: All About Me (1993) (TV), which she narrated herself. Quote: "Now to squash a rumor. No, I don't have Parkinson's. I inherited my shaking head from my grandfather Hepburn. I discovered that whisky helps stop the shaking. Problem is, if you're not careful, it stops the rest of you too. My head just shakes, but I promise you, it ain't gonna fall off!" Was a direct descendant of Britain's King John through one of his illegitimate children. Hepburn played King John's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, in The Lion in Winter (1968). Turned down the role of Marilla in Anne of Green Gables (1985) (TV), but recommended her great-niece, Schuyler Grant for the role of Anne. Schuyler ended up playing Diana instead. Meryl Streep beat her in the number of Oscar nominations, when she received her 13th Oscar nod for Adaptation. (2002). However, Hepburn still reigns as the only 4-time Oscar recipient for acting. Her father's name was Thomas Hepburn and her mother's name was Katharine Houghton. Each of their six children were given Mrs. Hepburn's maiden name for their middle names. Her maternal grandfather; her father's brother, Charlie; and her older brother, Tom, all committed suicide. These tragedies were never talked about in her family. Ms. Hepburn said of her parents, "There was nothing to be done about these matters and [my parents] simply did not believe in moaning about anything." Made nine films with Spencer Tracy, the first of which was Woman of the Year (1942). On June 2004 Sotheby's auction house hosted a two-day estate of Katharine Hepburn, auctioning of personal belongings of the legendary actress to collectors. The auction included her furniture, jewelry (which included the platinum, diamond and sapphire given to her by then-boyfriend Howard Hughes which fetched $120,000, six times its estimated price), paperwork (such as personal checks, telegrams, birth certificates, letters, film contracts, movie scripts), and nomination certificates from the Academy Awards. Among other items were casual clothes, and gowns that included her unusual wedding dress to Ludlow Ogden Smith in 1928, made of crushed white velvet with antiqued gold embroidery, sold for $27,000. Also consisted in the lot were house decorations drawings and paintings done by the actress herself, glamour portraits, and a glass bronze sculpture entitled "Angel on a Wave" sold for $90,000 while a self-portrait entitled "Breakfast in Bed and a Self-Portrait in Brisbane, Australia", fetched $33,000, some 40 times the estimated price. Movie memorabilia comprised of a ring from her 1968 film The Lion in Winter (1968), Gertrud (1964), the canoe from the film On Golden Pond (1981) sold for $19,200 to entertainer Wayne Newton and the most sought after piece and the most expensive item was the bronze bust of Spencer Tracy that Hepburn created herself and was featured in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). The audience cheered when the 3-inch sculpture sold for $316,000, compared to an estimate of $3,000-$5,000. The only awards that were won by the actress to be auctioned of were the 1958 Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year, the annual Shakespeare club of New York City, the Fashion Desinger Lifetime Achievment, a few Box Office Blue Ribbons, the Walk of Fame plaque and the 1990 Kennedy Center Honor. Her four Oscars were not included due to contract reasons. Was a natural red head. She was voted the "2nd Greatest Movie Star of All Time" by Entertainment Weekly. In The Lion in Winter (1968) she plays the mother of Richard Lionheart, who is played by Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins later said that Hepburn's voice was, in part, the basis for Hannibal Lecter's voice. Expressed great fondness for actors Harrison Ford, John Travolta, Melanie Griffith and Julia Roberts, and great disdain for Meryl Streep, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and - in particular - Woody Allen. When Cate Blanchett won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Aviator (2004), Hepburn became the first previous Oscar winner to become an Oscar-winning movie role. According to Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley's book "Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s", Hepburn was a leftist in her politics in the 1940s. When the Conference of Studio Unions, headed by suspected Communist Party member Herb Sorrell, launched a strike in 1946-47 against the studios and fought other unions for control over Hollywood's collective bargaining, she expressed support for him (Sorrell was kidnapped, beaten, and left for dead, during the strike, possibly by the Mafia, which up until the early 1940s, had controlled the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which was contesting the CSU for jurisdiction over Hollywood unions.) At a Screen Writers Guild meeting during the CSU strike, She also made a speech which anti-communist, anti-CSU SAG activist Ronald Reagan recognized as being based word for word on a CSU strike bulletin. She ignored lover Spencer Tracy's admonition that actors should stay out of politics ("Remember who shot Lincoln"). Despite their family's wealth, her mother had been sympathetic to Marxism and the Soviet Union. On May 19, 1947, Hepburn addressed a Progressive Party rally at the Hollywood Legion Stadium with Progressive Party stalwart and later presidential candidate Henry Wallace, the former vice president of the U.S. who had been sacked from President Harry S. Truman's cabinet for being pro- Soviet. Wearing a red dress, Hepburn delivered a speech, written by Communist Party member and soon-to-be Hollywood Ten indictee Dalton Trumbo. When screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. (winner of an Oscar for writing her picture Woman of the Year (1942) and one of the Hollywood Ten) was jailed, she wrote a letter of support for him. Years later, in 1964, when Lardner was trying to get Tracy to star in The Cincinnati Kid (1965), he thanked Hepburn for her support. She told him she didn't remember writing the letter and refused to talk about it. Is one of the many movie stars mentioned in Madonna's song "Vogue" After marrying Ludlow Ogden Smith in 1928, she forced him to change his name to S. Ogden Ludlow. She objected to her married name being "Katharine Smith" because there was already a well-known (and rather portly) radio singer with the same name. Kate Bosworth has said that Hepburn was her primary inspiration for her portrayal of "Lois Lane" in Superman Returns (2006). Did not attend Spencer Tracy's funeral out of respect to his family. Holds the Guiness World Record as the only movie star to win four Academy Awards, all for her leading roles in Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981). Did all her own stunts because the stunt woman never stood up straight enough. Is in the Guinness World Records-book for "Most 'Best Actress' Oscars Won". Was nominated 12 times for the Academy Award, all as Best Actress, and won four times. Jack Nicholson also has 12 nominations (8 as Best Actor and 4 Best Supporting Actor nominations) and three wins (two Best Actor trophies and one Best Supporting Actor gong). Hepburn beat out previous acting nomination record holder Bette Davis (a double winner who was nominated 10 times for an Academy Award, all of them Best Actress nods) with her 11th nod and 3rd win for The Lion in Winter (1968) (a record she extended with her 12 nomination and fourth win for On Golden Pond (1981). Herpburn herself was surpassed by Meryl Streep, with 13 nods (11 in the Best Actress category) and two wins (one in the Best Actress category and one Best supporting actress award). While it is possible that Nicholson might equal her four Oscar acting wins, it is improbable that her record of four wins in the top category will ever be equaled, let alone surpassed. Her performance as "Eleanor of Aquitaine" in The Lion in Winter (1968) is ranked #13 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006). Her performance as "Rose Sayer" in The African Queen (1951) is ranked #94 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time. Three films of hers are on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time. They are: The African Queen (1951) at #48, On Golden Pond (1981) at #45, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) at #35. Godmother of Stanley Kramer's daughter Katharine. She was named after Hepburn, who was directed by Kramer in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). Thanked by Natalie Merchant in the liner notes of her album "Motherland". In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by Wanda Tettoni and in the sixties by Anna Miserocchi. She was occasionally dubbed by Lidia Simoneschi, Andreina Pagnani and once by Rina Morelli in Desk Set (1957). One of her closest friends, Canadian portrait artist Myfanwy Pavelic died on May 11, 2007, one day short of Hepburn's 100th birthday anniversary. The intersection of East 49th Street and Second Avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City was renamed "Katherine Hepburn Place" shortly after her passing. Hepburn lived in a brownstone (244 East 49th Street) which is close to the intersection. Was fired by the producer of Travels with My Aunt (1972) early in the filming for demanding too many script changes. Suffered from pyrophobia (fear of fire). According to Anthony Harvey - the director of The Lion in Winter (1968) - she kept the Oscar she received for the film in a paper bag and in a cupboard for years after he'd delivered it to her. Aunt of Mundy Hepburn. During what is argued by film historians to be the greatest year in classic American cinema, she was a rare star who did not appear in a film in 1939. Instead, she was on stage playing Tracy Lord in "The Philadelphia Story," which proved to be her comeback after being branded as box-office poison. The scene in which her character falls into the canal in Summertime (1955) left her with a permanent eye infection as the water was contaminated. Survived the Great New England Hurricane of Sept. 21, 1938 while at her summer home in Fenwick, CT. Reportedly she was there considering a marriage proposal by Howard Hughes. The storm killed at least 682. According to her friend and biographer A. Scott Berg, although she said often that Alice Adams (1935) was her favorite film role, it was actually her performance as Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) that she regarded as her greatest achievement in film.