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Go to the Martin Beck Theatre and watch Katherine Hepburn run the gamut of emotions from A to B.
Sep 17, 2025
Nobody can imitate me. You can always see impersonations of Katharine Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. But not me. Because I've always drawn on myself only.
I think mystery is kind of great. I don't know anything about Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn or Ava Gardner - not really - and I like that. I love watching their movies because they're my personal movie stars. I don't know what they eat and who their trainer is.
I would really love to sit with Kathryn Hepburn because I find her so interesting.
Working with Katherine Hepburn, she said to me, "Don't act." She said, "Read the lines. Just be. Just speak the lines." I said, "Okay." She said, "You look good. You got a good pair of shoulders, you got a good head, good face."
I loved the masculine style of dressing of Katharine Hepburn, who came from the same town that I came from. I was fascinated by the way she wore trousers. So I think the romanticism of the movies also influenced my life and my interest in fashion greatly.
The imprint of Miss Hepburn is absolutely, totally present. Like it or not, she will be the most important look of the twentieth century.
I've had such an odd career. I always wanted to be a great actor. I wanted to be Katharine Hepburn - ish - there was a bit of nobility about her. Instead I've always felt like the mutt standing on the sidelines, panting and saying, "Me, too! How about me?" That's just part of my personality.
[On Katharine Hepburn's stage performance:] She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.
During Katherine Hepburn's time when she was just coming into her own at 40.
And Kate Hepburn-God, she's beautiful, God, she plays golf well, God, she can get anyone in the world on the phone, God, she knows what to do all the time, God, she wears clothes well.
I wanted to be Katharine Hepburn-ish - there was a bit of nobility about her.
I remember when I did Little Women, I didn't watch the Katharine Hepburn one over and over, which I thought I would do. Heathers, I was completely obsessed with.
When I did that interview with Hepburn, the only ground rule was, you did not discuss Spencer Tracy. Spencer Tracy's widow is still alive, and she respected that.
[On her work in "Keep Your Powder Dry"] I didn't want to do it, but they said if I did it they would give me Undercurrent with Robert Taylor. Then they gave Undercurrent to Katharine Hepburn, so I left MGM.
Nothing could be taken for granted. Women who loved you tried to cut your throat, while women who didn't even know your name scrubbed your back. Witches could sound like Katharine Hepburn and your best friend could try to strangle you. Smack in the middle of an orchid there might be a blob of jello and inside a Mickey Mouse doll, a fixed and radiant star.
You know, you have Scorsese who worked with De Niro and - or DiCaprio. You have William Wyler who worked with Bette Davis. You have George Cukor who worked with Katharine Hepburn. I just - people get to be friends and then there's a - that's a - you can take risks together and each time out you take a different risk.
(on Katharine Hepburn) She talks at you as though you were a microphone; she lectured the hell out of me on temperance and the evils of drink. She doesn't give a damn how she looks. I don't think she tries to be a character. I think she is one.
Who is Katharine Hepburn? It took me a long time to create that creature.
As the tide of feminism that crested two decades ago recedes and the old advance-and-retreat games of courtship return, "Pride & Prejudice" speaks wistfully to the moment. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are tantalizing early prototypes for a Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy ideal of lovers as brainy, passionate sparring partners. That the world teems with fantasies of Mr. Darcy and his ilk there is no doubt. How many of his type are to be found outside the pages of a novel, however, is another matter.
The closest to Hepburn is Cate Blanchett.
The bravery of Stanley Kramer's 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' amounted to two Hollywood legends - Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy - telling the world that a black son-in-law is something they can live with, and so should you, especially if he looks like Sidney Poitier and has degrees.
I felt as if I was the brunt of some massive joke at my expense: Can you believe this loser can be connected to Marlon Brando and Katharine Hepburn? But through the years I have learned to tolerate and sometimes embrace the idea. People have asked me if I consider it an honour. Well, all it indicates is that I've been in a lot of movies with a lot of people. And besides that there are plenty of other actors that would work.
I've worked with an awful lot of people. Katy Hepburn, Spencer Tracy.
We've had Audrey Hepburn, we've had Twiggy, we've had Veruschka, we've had Kate Moss. I'm trying to figure out why I am to blame for skinniness.
I was really blown away and inspired by everything that she [Audrey Hepburn] had done for children via and through UNICEF and I guess it really, really floored me in a way that I hadn't ever felt toward a public figure before. To see her kindness was inspiring and spoke to me as a person. She was so real and so elegant..I am also inspired by what Angelina Jolie is doing by traveling to places like Cambodia to help children by actually being there and being more involved.
I just told my agent to forget all other projects for me. I was waiting for Audrey Hepburn. She asked for me, and I was ready. This could be the last and only opportunity I’d have to work with the great and lovely Audrey Hepburn and I was not missing it. Period.
Growing up, I always had my dreams set on being an actor, so I looked up to Julia Roberts, Audrey Hepburn. I also look up to Kate Winslet and Renée [Zellweger] and Cate Blanchett...and Diane Keaton - she's a genius. I think it's very inspiring to see these women attack such complex roles.
Honey, you [Michael Jackson] gotta pick a race first. All of a sudden you're a black man, then you're Diana Ross, now you're Audrey Hepburn. Then he's got the little beard going on. He's like Lord of the Rings, the entire cast. Michael's about to jump species.
I like the idea of growing old gracefully and full of wrinkles... like Audrey Hepburn.
Put on a trench, you're suddenly Audrey Hepburn walking along the Seine.
Ive always been obsessed with Audrey Hepburn.
It was a fantastic learning experience and OK, I got slammed because I wasn't Audrey Hepburn but you could have predicted that, really, if you'd opened your eyes wide enough.
I am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait.
Audrey Hepburn, as famous as she was, packed her own suitcases... I don’t know why that struck me, but it did. 'She has a servant’s heart,' I thought.
Audrey Hepburn's face was made for the camera.
Growing up I wanted to be a mixture of Audrey Hepburn and Lucille Ball. Apparently I told my mum when I was eight that I wanted to be an actor.
She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.
There must be something wrong with those people who think Audrey Hepburn doesn’t perspire, hiccup or sneeze, because they know that’s not true. I n fact, I hiccup more than most.
My look is attainable. Women can look like Audrey Hepburn by flipping out their hair, buying the large sunglasses, and the little sleeveless dresses.
If you think about Audrey Hepburn, I think she became more beautiful when she stopped being an actress and started working with humanitarian campaigns. The more engaged you can become the more you can shed your self-consciousness.
People in these places don't know Audrey Hepburn, but they recognise the name UNICEF. When they see UNICEF their faces light up, because they know that something is happening. In the Sudan, for example, they call a water pump UNICEF.
I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.
How did we go - in a relatively short amount of time - from Audrey Hepburn to Kim Kardashian? I don't know how that happened. Like did we all collectively slip and hit our heads as a society? Why are we accepting garbage as nourishment? I don't know what's going on.
For every person that says I'm the new Audrey Hepburn, someone else says that I look like an alien.
Somehow I was invited to visit with Audrey Hepburn. I had this afternoon with her, and she gave me a couple things. She was so gracious and everything you would think that she would be.
I never want to lie about my age. If I look around at the actresses I admire, they are all women who have not fought growing older, but embraced it and been proud of it - women like Sophia Loren or Audrey Hepburn.
Blair liked to think of herself as a hopeless romantic in the style of old movie actresses like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. She was always coming up with plot devices for the movie she was starring in at the moment, the movie that was her life.
Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.
[Katharine Hepburn] was much stronger, much more opinionated than I am or ever was, and it was considered attractive on her. But not on me. I don't know. Maybe her Bryn Mawr accent was more appealing than mine.