Katharine Hepburn Biography And Net Worth

Who is Katharine Hepburn?

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress whose career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned over six decades. She was known for her headstrong independence, spirited personality, and outspokenness, cultivating a screen persona that matched this public image, and regularly playing strong-willed, sophisticated women. Her work was in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and earned her various accolades, including four Academy Awards  Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. In 1999, Hepburn was named the greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute.

Bio Data

Biography

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907, in Hartford, Connecticut, the second of six children. Her parents were Thomas Norval Hepburn (1879–1962), a urologist at Hartford Hospital, and Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn (1878–1951), a feminist campaigner. Both parents fought for social change in the United States: Thomas Hepburn helped establish the New England Social Hygiene Association, which educated the public about venereal disease, while the elder Katharine headed the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association and later campaigned for birth control with Margaret Sanger. As a child, Hepburn joined her mother in several “Votes For Women” demonstrations. The Hepburn children were raised to exercise freedom of speech and encouraged to think and debate on any topic they wished. Her parents were criticized by the community for their progressive views, which stimulated Hepburn to fight against the barriers she encountered. Hepburn said she realized from a young age that she was the product of “two very remarkable parents”, and credited her “enormously lucky” upbringing with providing the foundation for her success. She remained close to her family throughout her life.

The young Hepburn was a tomboy who liked to call herself Jimmy and cut her hair short. Katharine Hepburn’s father was eager for his children to use their minds and bodies to the limit and taught them to swim, run, dive, ride, wrestle, and play golf and tennis. Golf became a passion of Hepburn’s; she took daily lessons and became very adept, reaching the semi-final of the Connecticut Young Women’s Golf Championship. She loved swimming in Long Island Sound and took ice-cold baths every morning. Hepburn was a fan of films from a young age and went to see one every Saturday night. She would put on plays and perform for her neighbours with friends and siblings for 50 cents a ticket to raise money for the Navajo people.

In March 1921, Hepburn, 13, and her 16-year-old brother Tom were visiting New York, staying with a friend of their mother’s in Greenwich Village over the Easter break. On March 30, Hepburn discovered the body of her adored older brother dead from an apparent suicide. He had tied a curtain tie around a beam and hanged himself. The Hepburn family denied it was suicide and maintained that Tom’s death must have been an experiment that had gone wrong. The incident made the teenage Hepburn nervous, moody, and suspicious of people. She shied away from other children, dropped out of Oxford School, and was tutored privately. For many years she used Tom’s birthday (November 8) as her own. It was not until her 1991 autobiography, Me: Stories of My Life, that Hepburn revealed her true birth date.

In 1924, Hepburn was admitted to Bryn Mawr College. She initially agreed to attend the institution to satisfy her mother, who had studied there but ultimately found the experience to be fulfilling. At first, She struggled with the scholastic demands of university, and once was suspended for smoking in her room. Hepburn was drawn to acting, but roles in college plays were conditional on good grades. Once her marks had improved, she began performing regularly. She performed the lead role in a production of The Woman in the Moon in her senior year, and the positive response it received cemented Hepburn’s plans to pursue a theatrical career. She graduated with a degree in history and philosophy in June 1928.

Career – Theatre, Hollywood and Television

Hepburn left university determined to become an actress. The day after graduating, she travelled to Baltimore to meet Edwin H. Knopf, who ran a successful stock theatre company. Impressed by her eagerness, Knopf cast Hepburn in his current production, The Czarina. She received good reviews for her small role, and the Printed Word described her performance as “arresting”. She was given a part in the following week’s show, but her second performance was less well received. She was criticized for her shrill voice, and so left Baltimore to study with a voice tutor in New York City.

In 1929, Hepburn played the lead in “Death Takes a Holiday,” but was again fired. She continued to take on a variety of roles that ended in her release. Hepburn had greater success with a summer stock company in Ivoryton, Connecticut, where she had her breakthrough performance in a production of the Greek fable “The Warrior’s Husband”

Hepburn’s performance in “The Warrior’s Husband” drew the attention of a Hollywood talent scout, who asked the actress to test for a part in the upcoming RKO film “A Bill of Divorcement.” Hepburn agreed after negotiating a high salary and arrived in Hollywood in the summer of 1932. “A Bill of Divorcement” made her into an instant star. For RKO, she went on to appear in “Christopher Strong,” “Little Women,” and “Morning Glory,” the lattermost of which earned her her first Academy Award for Best Actress. Hepburn’s career took a slight downturn after that, as she starred in a string of commercial flops including “Spitfire,” “The Little Minister,” and “Break of Hearts.” She rebounded in 1935 with “Alice Adams,” for which she received her second Academy Award nomination. Hepburn subsequently starred in such films as “Sylvia Scarlett,” “Mary of Scotland,” “A Woman Rebels,” “Quality Street,” and “Stage Door.” In 1938, she starred opposite Cary Grant in Howard Hawks’ screwball comedy “Bringing Up Baby,” a commercial disappointment that later became one of her most beloved films. Hepburn also starred alongside Grant in the film adaptation of “Holiday,” which she had appeared in on stage.

Labelled “box office poison” after the commercial failure of “Bringing Up Baby,” Hepburn was in need of a comeback. She got just that when she starred opposite James Stewart and Cary Grant in George Cukor’s 1940 romantic comedy “The Philadelphia Story,” adapted from the play in which she also starred. The film was one of the biggest hits of the year and earned Hepburn another Academy Award nomination. She continued her success with “Woman of the Year,” her first of nine screen pairings with Spencer Tracy. Hepburn’s other notable credits in the 40s include “Keeper of the Flame,” “Dragon Seed,” “Without Love,” “Undercurrent,” and “State of the Union.” She closed out the decade with one of her most acclaimed pairings with Tracy, “Adam’s Rib.”

Hepburn significantly expanded her film repertoire in the 50s, taking on a wide range of genres. Early in the decade, she starred opposite Humphrey Bogart in the adventure film “The African Queen,” her first film shot in Technicolor. The year after that, she was in the sports comedy “Pat and Mike,” her final film at MGM. Hepburn had some of her greatest successes in the latter half of the decade, starting with David Lean’s romantic drama “Summertime,” for which she received another Academy Award nomination. She garnered further nominations for “The Rainmaker” and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “Suddenly, Last Summer.” Among Hepburn’s other credits in the 50s was the romantic office comedy “Desk Set.”

Later Hollywood Career

Hepburn’s next Academy Award nomination came for Sidney Lumet’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1962. The actress took a break after that to care for an ill Spencer Tracy; the pair finally reunited in 1967 to star in their final film together, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” A huge success for Hepburn, the film became her biggest commercial hit and resulted in her second Academy Award win. She won a second consecutive Academy Award and her third overall the next year for her performance as Eleanor of Aquitaine in the historical drama “The Lion in Winter.” Hepburn subsequently starred in “The Madwoman of Chaillot.” Continuing to work steadily into the 1970s, she appeared in such films as “The Trojan Women,” “A Delicate Balance,” and “Rooster Cogburn.”

By the 1980s, Hepburn had developed a physical tremor that made it difficult for her to work. However, she still went on to appear in some films, most notably the 1981 drama “On Golden Pond,” in which she and Henry Fonda starred as an ageing couple. One of the highest-grossing films of the year, “On Golden Pond” earned both Hepburn and Fonda Academy Awards, making Hepburn the first and only person in history to win four Oscars for acting. Focusing mostly on television after that, Hepburn appeared in a few further films. After “Grace Quigley” in 1984, she had her final feature film role in the 1994 film “Love Affair.”

Net Worth

At the time of her death, Katharine Hepburn was said to have had a net worth equal to $30 million dollars (after adjusting for inflation).

Personal Life

Hepburn was known for being fiercely private, and would not give interviews or talk to fans for much of her career. She distanced herself from the celebrity lifestyle and was uninterested in a social scene she saw as tedious and superficial.  She wore casual clothes that went strongly against convention in an era of glamour. She rarely appeared in public, avoided restaurants, and once wrestled a camera out of a photographer’s hand when he took a picture without asking. Despite her zeal for privacy, she enjoyed her fame and later confessed that she would not have liked the press to ignore her completely. The protective attitude toward her private life thawed as she aged; beginning with a two-hour-long interview on The Dick Cavett Show in 1973, Hepburn became more open with the public.

The actress led an active life, reportedly swimming and playing tennis every morning. In her eighties, she was still playing tennis regularly, as indicated in her 1993 documentary All About Me. She also enjoyed painting, which became a passion later in life. During her lifetime life, she openly promoted birth control and supported the legal right to abortion.

Hepburn’s only marriage was to Ludlow Ogden Smith, a socialite-businessman from Philadelphia whom she met while a student at Bryn Mawr. The couple wed on December 12, 1928, when she was 21 and he was 29. Smith changed his name to S. Ogden Ludlow at her behest so that she would not be “Kate Smith”, which she considered too plain. She never fully committed to the marriage and prioritized her career. The move to Hollywood in 1932 cemented the couple’s estrangement. Hepburn filed for divorce in Yucatán on April 30, 1934, and it was finalized on May 8. The pair remained friends until his death in 1979.

Hepburn stuck to her decision not to remarry and made a conscious choice not to have children. She believed that motherhood required a full-time commitment, and said it was not one she was willing to make. “I would have been a terrible mother,” she told Berg, “because I’m basically a very selfish human being.” She felt she had partially experienced parenthood through her much younger siblings, which fulfilled any need to have children of her own.

Rumours have existed since the 1930s that Katharine Hepburn was a lesbian or bisexual, which she often joked about. In a 2017 documentary, columnist Liz Smith, who was a close friend of Hepburn attested that she was.

Illness and Death

Hepburn’s health began to deteriorate not long after her final screen appearance, and she was hospitalized in March 1993 for exhaustion. In the winter of 1996, she was hospitalized with pneumonia. By 1997, she had become very weak and was speaking and eating very little, and it was feared she would die. She showed signs of dementia in her final years. By 2000, she was regarded by her niece to be a “private person”. In July 2001, she was admitted to a hospital for pneumonia and a urinary tract infection. In May 2003, an aggressive tumour was found in Hepburn’s neck. The decision was made not to medically intervene, and she died from cardiac arrest on June 29, 2003, at the Hepburn family home in Fenwick, Connecticut.

She was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford. Hepburn requested there be no memorial service. In 2004, in accordance with Hepburn’s wishes, her belongings were put up for auction with Sotheby’s in New York City. The event garnered $5.8 million, which Hepburn willed to her family.

FAQs

How many Oscar Awards did Katharine Hepburn receive?

Hepburn won Four Academy Awards and a total of 12 Oscar nominations for Best Actress

How many children Does Katharine Hepburn have?

Katharine Hepburn deliberately decided not to have children because she believed it could interfere with her acting career.

How much was Katharine Hepburn worth when she died?

Katharine Hepburn was worth

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