In the glittering spectacle of Hollywood, some names shine brighter than most. While becoming the face of an industry is impressive, becoming a legend is nearly impossible. Katharine Hepburn achieved both with an indefatigable energy that seemed to resonate through everything she did, both on and off-screen.
Notably acclaimed for her performances, celebrated as the only actor to win four Academy Awards for her roles on screen, Hepburn was also a pioneer off it. Defiant in her creativity and willingness to stand her ground, Hepburn was a pillar of female excellence in the earliest moments of cinema’s boom into the mainstream and there can be no doubt she cut a path for thousands of actors to follow.
Whether sparring with Spencer Tracy in comedies like Adam’s Rib, or commanding the screen with wit, poise and elegance in The African Queen, Hepburn never played it safe. She was convinced of her abilities and able to harness them to deliver what was needed.
Hepburn’s roles were a new shape of femininity. Not just a damsel in distress or an ingenue looking for a leader, her roles were strong and intelligent, forces of nature ready to strike the audience down. The Philadelphia Story and he Oscar-winning turn in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner act as perfect displays of her ability to embody the many facets of womanhood.
But while she was robust in her defence of her vision, this often meant Hepburn was cast as difficult to work with. It’s a tale as old as time itself that when a woman begins to find her feet and ‘wear the trousers’ figuratively and physically, the working world begins to take umbrage with their determination, and isolation inevitably follows. It’s something that only increases with age.
“Being an actor is such a humiliating experience because you are selling yourself to the public.”
Katharine Hepburn
By the time Hepburn reached the production of 1955’s Summertime, she had been working for decades and had seemingly suffered a similar fate, as she was left on her own for the majority of the shoot, with her cast and crew seemingly a little frightened to cross her.
“I suppose they all thought I had madly exciting things to do and left me to it,” explained Hepburn, as noted in Katharine Hepburn: A Remarkable Woman by Anne Edwards.
“It’s my own fault entirely. I have brought it upon myself,” the star continued, reflecting on her journey thus far and her unwillingness to bow down to others’ expectations or demands. “I am rather a sharp person. I have a sharp face and a sharp voice. When I speak on the telephone, I snap into it. It puts people off, I suppose.”
Why didn’t Katharine Hepburn like acting?
The isolation was one thing, but perhaps the worst thing for Hepburn was what she called the humiliation of acting, especially as she grew older, out of her preferred roles and into a different set of casting expectations. “Being an actor is such a humiliating experience because you are selling yourself to the public, your face, your personality, and that is humiliating,” she noted. “As you get older, it becomes more humiliating because you’ve got less to sell.”
Of course, she couldn’t have been more wrong. True, Hepburn had been a Hollywood leading lady, with a fair dose of her beauty helping to seal the deal, but she was an actor first and foremost. While her first Oscar for ‘Best Actress’ came in 1933 with Morning Glory at the age of 26, her next three would come after the age of 60.
1967’s Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner was quickly followed the following year by a sharp and cunning performance in The Lion In Winter. Her final gong came in 1981, as Hepburn reached the age of 74. While these awards likely didn’t replace the idea of communal comfort, one can safely assume that Katharine Hepburn didn’t hate acting quite that much.
