Katharine Hepburn's Real Name: Katharine Houghton Hepburn

Quick answer: Katharine Hepburn's documented full name is Katharine Houghton Hepburn. She was born on May 12, 1907, in Hartford, Connecticut, and died on June 29, 2003, in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, at 96. She won a record four Academy Awards for Best Actress (Biography; Britannica).

Real name and early life

Biography.com lists her name as Katharine Houghton Hepburn and says she was born on May 12, 1907, in Hartford, to Katharine Martha Houghton, a suffrage activist, and Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn. A Library of Congress CIP galley likewise gives Katharine Houghton Hepburn, born May 12, 1907. The Library of Congress heading is "Hepburn, Katharine, 1907-2003." One citation note in that record lists November 9, 1909, which conflicts with the May 12, 1907, date given by Britannica, Biography.com, and other notes in the same authority file.

She attended Bryn Mawr College, near Philadelphia, and graduated in 1928 with a degree in history, Biography.com says. After several years of stage work in and around New York, an RKO talent scout saw her on Broadway and she made her screen debut opposite John Barrymore in A Bill of Divorcement.

Career highlights

Hepburn won her first Academy Award the following year, for Morning Glory. Popular comedies followed, including Bringing Up Baby (1938), opposite Cary Grant. After a stretch of flops led some producers to call her "box-office poison," Biography.com says, she returned to Broadway as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story, bought the film rights, and starred in the 1940 movie with Grant and James Stewart.

She and Spencer Tracy made nine films together, beginning with Woman of the Year (1942). Britannica records later Best Actress Oscars for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), in which she played Eleanor of Aquitaine, and an unprecedented fourth for On Golden Pond (1981). Other widely cited films include The African Queen (1951) and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962). She also won an Emmy Award for Love Among the Ruins (1975). In 1999 the American Film Institute named her the top female American screen legend. Her last movie was Love Affair (1994). She was a 1990 Kennedy Center honoree and published the memoir Me: Stories of My Life (1991).

Death

She died on June 29, 2003, at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, at 96, Britannica and Biography.com report.

Name notes for searchers

Katharine Houghton Hepburn is the documented full name; she was billed as Katharine Hepburn. The spelling is Katharine, with two a's, not Katherine. She should not be confused with the Belgian-born actress Audrey Hepburn, a different person.