Actress Katharine Hepburn was born on this date in 1907. 10 things you might not know about her:
Her mother was a suffragette and early advocate of birth control, and raised Katherine to be independent and her own person. Katherine was a tomboy and one summer went as far as having her Hair cut really short and calling herself “Jimmy”.
In her case, that was just a phase, but she nevertheless hated dressing as women did in that time. She much preferred Trousers to skirts. She said, "the thing that drove me out of skirts was the stocking situation... That's why I've always worn pants... that way you can always go barefoot". If a man suggested she wear a skirt or a dress, she’d say, ‘Try one. Try a skirt.’
At 13, she was the one who found the body of her 15 year old brother who’d hanged himself. Her family claimed he’d not committed suicide but had died as a result of magic trick gone wrong.
As a young woman, she was keen on Golf. She took lessons every day and reached the semi-final of the Connecticut Young Women's Golf Championship.
She began her career as a stage actress, her Broadway debut being 1930’s Art and Mrs. Bottle. However, a couple of years later a play called The Lake was slammed by critics including Dorothy Parker’s observation that Hepburn “ran the gamut of emotion from A to B.” Hepburn didn’t get on with the director and was miserable, so she bought out her contract and simply walked away. The Lake, however, gave her one of her most iconic lines. In 1937’s Stage Door, director Gregory La Cava, gave her a line he’d borrowed from the play: “The calla lilies are in bloom again.”
She once threw a cup of water at Ginger Rogers, who was wearing a new mink coat at the time. If the coat was real mink, it wouldn't shrink, Hepburn claimed. It’s not known why she did it. It might have been jealousy as Hepburn was dating Howard Hughes at the time and there were rumours he’d been showing interest in Ginger.
She married only once, to Ludlow Ogden Smith, a socialite-businessman from Philadelphia whom she met at college. She insisted he change his name to S. Ogden Ludlow because she didn’t want to be plain old “Kate Smith”. Her career was more important than her marriage, which ended in divorce although the couple remained friends. Hepburn often expressed gratitude toward Smith for his financial and moral support in the early days of her career, and in her autobiography she called herself "a terrible pig" for the way she treated him. She chose not to have children because she believed motherhood was a full-time commitment, that she was not willing to make. She had a 27 year affair with Spencer Tracy who was a Catholic and never divorced his wife. They made nine films together.
She threw herself fully into every role. She performed her own stunts and learned any skills her characters had. She would learn the lines of all the other roles as well as her own, and got involved in the production of her films, making suggestions for the script and stating her opinion on costumes, lighting and camerawork.
She held the record for the most Academy Award nominations after her Best Actress nomination for On Golden Pond in 1981, at 12. She held the record until 2002 when Meryl Streep achieved her 13th and now has 21. Hepburn won four awards, though, while Meryl Streep, at time of writing, has three.
Hepburn liked to stay active and played Tennis into her eighties. Her final role was in 1994 when she was 87, in the television film One Christmas.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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