American actress Katharine Hepburn was BOTD in 1907. Born in Hartford, Connecticut to a family of wealthy New England liberals, she was encouraged from an early age to be athletic, independent and free-thinking. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College in 1928, she moved to New York to pursue an acting career. Her first major Broadway success, playing an Amazon in 1932’s The Warrior’s Husband, brought her to Hollywood where she signed with RKO Pictures. She made an impressive debut in George Cukor’s A Bill of Divorcement, winning an Oscar the following year for her third film, Morning Glory. Tall, angular and androgynous with an eccentric drawl, she was an unlikely star, whose staunch independence and refusal to compromise earned her many enemies. When RKO publicists removed her trousers from her trailer, Hepburn paraded around the film set in her underwear until they were returned. Her natural athleticism and boyish charisma were well-utilised as an aviatrix in Dorothy Arzner’s Christopher Strong, the tomboy Jo March in Cukor’s Little Women and a cross-dressing con artist in Sylvia Scarlett. By 1939, she was labelled “box office poison”, despite delightful pairings with Cary Grant in the screwball comedies Bringing Up Baby and Holiday. Undaunted, she staged a spectacular comeback with the Broadway play The Philadelphia Story, in an amusingly self-reflexive role as a spoiled socialite brought down to earth. She sensibly purchased the film rights, re-teaming with Cukor and Grant for the wildly successful 1940 version, revitalising her Hollywood career. In 1942, she starred with Spencer Tracy in the romantic comedy Woman of the Year. They became one of Hollywood’s most beloved on-screen partnerships, making eight films together. In the 1950s, she moved into mature roles in The African Queen, Summertime and Long Day’s Journey into Night, and won back-to-back Oscars in the 1960s for The Lion in Winter and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. In 1981, she won her final Oscar for On Golden Pond, becoming the first (and to date, only) actor to win four acting Oscars. In later years, she suffered from a neurological condition, though continued acting, making a vivid appearance in her final film, 1994’s Love Affair. Hepburn was briefly married to playwright Ludlow Ogden Smith, whom she divorced amicably in the 1930s. Famously unmarried and childless, she is thought to have had an affair with Howard Hughes and a 20-year relationship with the married Tracy, putting her career on hold to nurse him through his final illness. In his 2012 memoir, Hollywood hustler Scotty Bowers claimed that Hepburn and Tracy were both gay and had a loving though sexless relationship, promoting the idea of an affair as a media smokescreen. Bowers also claimed to have procured over 150 women for Hepburn over many years, including a long-term partner named Barbara. Hepburn published several memoirs, neither confirming nor denying rumours about her sexuality. She died in 2003, aged 96. Named by the American Film Institute as the greatest American star of all time, her life and work has inspired generations of actresses. Long hailed as a feminist icon, the revelations about her sexuality prompted critical reassessment of the queer codings in her film roles. She was played by Cate Blanchett in the 2004 Hughes biopic The Aviator, who won an Oscar for her performance.