French films

Katharine Hepburn - biography

1907-2003
Biography
Katharine Hepburn photo
Katharine Hepburn is best-known for the following films:


Katharine Hepburn Quotes
“Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.”

“Acting is the most minor of gifts.  After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four.”

“Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.”

“At my age, you don’t get much variety - usually some old nut who’s off her track.”

“Get the old girl out of the garage, recharge the battery, blow up the tyres, get her simonized and off she goes!”

“I discovered early on - get a tough director.”

“It’s a business you go into because your an egocentric.  It’s a very embarrassing profession.”

“To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts.  It makes it easier to stoop the next time.”

“When I started out, I didn’t have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act.  I just wanted to be famous.”

“With all the opportunities I had, I could have done more.  And if I’d done more I could have been quite remarkable.”

“Spencer [Tracy] was a typical American product.  He never gussied it up.  He just did it, let it ride along on its enormous simplicity.”

“[Cary Grant] is personality functioning.”

“Dressing up is a bore.  At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that.  But I’m past that age.”

“It’s a bore - B-O-R-E - when you find you’ve begun to rot.”

“The average Hollywood film star’s ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.”

“I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.”

“As for me, prizes are nothing.  My prize is my work.”

“Life is full of censorship.  I can’t spit in your eye.”

“Afraid of death?  Not at all.  Be a great relief.  Then I wouldn’t have to talk to you.”

“David Lean knows more about films than a banker knows about money.”

“Do it - try it - fight - write - act - direct - indulge - survive.  John Huston can do it all.  And he rubbed my back when I was sick.  He sets his work on fire.”

“Enemies are so stimulating.”

“Once a crowd chased me for an autograph.  ‘Beat it,’ I said, ‘go sit on a tack!’ ‘We made you,’ they said.  ‘Like hell you did,’ I told them.”

“I wear my sort of clothes to save me the trouble of deciding which clothes to wear.”

“It’s life isn’t it?  You plow ahead and make a hit.  And you plow on and someone passes you.  Then someone passes them.  Time levels.”

“Life is hard.  After all, it kills you.”

“Life is to be lived.  If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting.  And you don’t do that by sitting around.”

“We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself.  It’s never your fault.  But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.”

“Without discipline, there’s no life at all.”

“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.”

“Only the really plain people know about love - the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents.”

“To be loved is very demoralizing.”

“It’s bloody impractical: to love, honour and obey.  If it weren’t, you wouldn’t have to sign a contract.”

“Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.”

“If you want to give up the admiration of thousands of men for the distain of one, go ahead, get married.”

“I’ve always had a good head for deals - not for handling money.  Until he died, my father used to send me my allowance, which was how I preferred it.”

“Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it - I would have made a terrible mother.”

“Many of my peers are fornicating on the screen for money.  It’s so hilarious when they start rolling around in bed.  The sex they portray looks pretty pathetic to me.  Doesn’t look like any sex I’ve ever had.”

“My father, a surgeon and urologist, studied sex professionally all his life.  Before he died at 82, he told me he hadn’t come to any conclusions about it at all.”

“I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.”

“Only when a woman decides not to have children can a woman live like a man.  That’s what I’ve done.”

“Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do.”

“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other.  Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.”

“With women it’s ‘pardon me while I bake a cake or have a child’.  They’re pulled sixty ways from Sunday.  It’s hard to know what’s woman and what’s custom.  I find a woman’s point of view much grander and finer than a man’s.”

“I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does.  The stupid things you do, you regret...  if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.”

“I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.”

“I remember as a child going around with Votes For Women balloons.  I learnt early what it is to be snubbed for a good cause.”

“If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.”

“If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.”

“It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.”

“It’s a rather rude gesture, but at least it’s clear what you mean.”

“My greatest strength is common sense.  I’m really a standard brand - like Campbell’s tomato soup or Baker’s chocolate.”

“Never complain.  Never explain.”

“Trying to be fascinating is an asinine position to be in.”

“Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.”





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