Audrey And Katharine Hepburn example essay topic

Katharine and Audrey Hepburn became more than a movie stars. Their legends started, first on screen, then grew into the hearts of people everywhere. Their movies where classics and their style phenomenal. Together they proved that women didn't have to show their bodies to get rave reviews. Katharine Hepburn once said "If you are given a choice between money and sex appeal, take the money", she advised. "As you get older, the money will become your sex appeal" (The Golden Years: Katharine Hepburn).

They have a special quality about them that everyone seemed to recognize. Katharine Hepburn who says she is "revered rather like an old building", always makes the lists of the world's most admired women. Her career spans more than seven decades, and she is the only actor or actress who has been nominated for twelve Academy Awards and the only woman to win four as Best Actress, three of them after the age of sixty (Ryan 65). Katharine Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut. She was the daughter of a doctor and a suffragette, both of whom always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential (The Golden Years: Katharine Hepburn).

An athletic tomboy when she was a child, she was also very close to her brother, Tom, and was devastated at age fourteen to find him dead, from accidentally hanging himself while practicing a hanging trick their father had taught them. She then became very shy around girls her age, and was schooled at home. She attended Bryn Mawr College, however, and it was here that she decided to become an actress, appearing in many of their productions (Latham 25). After graduating, she began getting small roles in plays on Broadway and elsewhere (Compton's Encyclopedia: Katharine Hepburn). She finally broke into stardom when she took the starring role of the Amazon princess Anti ope in A Warrior's Husband in 1932. The inevitable film offers followed, and after making a few screen tests, she was cast in Bill of Divorcement, opposite John Barrymore.

The film was a hit, and after agreeing to her salary demands, RKO signed her to a contract. She made five films between 1932 and 1934. For her third, Morning Glory, she won her first Academy Award. Her fourth, Little Women was the most successful picture of its day. But stories were beginning to leak out of her haughty behavior off-screen and her refusal to play the Hollywood game. Katharine always wore slacks and no makeup and, never posed for pictures or gave interviews.

Audiences were shocked at her unconventional behavior instead of applauding it, and so when she returned to Broadway in 1934 to star in The Lake, the critics panned her. The audiences, who at first bought up tickets, soon deserted her. When she returned to Hollywood, things didn't get much better. From the period 1935 to 1938, she had only two hits: Alice Adams and Stage Door. The many flops included Break of Hearts in 1935, Sylvia Scarlett in 1936, Mary of Scotland in 1936, Quality Street in 1937, Bringing Up Baby in 1938. With so many flops, she came to be labeled "box-office poison".

She decided to go back to Broadway to star in The Philadelphia Story, and was rewarded with a smash. She quickly bought the film rights, and so was able to negotiate her way back to Hollywood on her own terms. The film version of Philadelphia Story, was a box-office hit, and Hepburn, was bankable again. For her next film, Woman of the Year, she was paired with Spencer Tracy, and the chemistry between them lasted for eight more films, spanning the course of 25 years, and a romance that lasted that long off-screen. Their films included the very successful Adam's Rib, Pat and Mike, and Desk Set. Hepburn moved into middle-aged spinster roles, receiving her fifth Oscar nomination for the film.

She played more of these types of roles throughout the 50's, and won more Oscar nominations for many of them, including her roles in Summertime, Rainmaker, and Last Summer (Compton's Encyclopedia). Her film roles became fewer and farther between in the sixties, as she devoted her time to her partner Spencer Tracy. After a five-year absence from films, she then made Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, her last film with Tracy and the last film Tracy ever made; he died just weeks after finishing it. The next year, she did Lion in Winter. In the seventies, she turned to making made for TV films, with Glass Menagerie, Love Among the Ruins and Corn Is Green.

She still continued to make an occasional appearance in feature films, such as Rooster C ogburn, with John Wayne, and On Golden Pond, with Henry Fonda. This last brought her a twelfth Oscar nomination and fourth win. She holds the record of being the actress with the most Oscar nominations and most Oscar wins. She made more TV films in the eighties, and wrote her autobiography, Me, in 1991. Her most recent feature film was Love Affair, with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and her last TV film to date was One Christmas. She is still very much alive, now in her 90's and retired to Connecticut (The Golden Years: Katharine Hepburn).

Even though there was no relation family wise, there was a close relation on screen between Audrey and Katharine. They both had a charm that lit up the screen. At five feet seven inches, and one hundred pounds she was an oddity, something that the movie screen had never seen before. Billy Wilder once said about Audrey, "What is needed to become a real star is an extra element that God can give you or not. You are already born with it. You can't learn it.

God kissed the face of Audrey Hepburn, and there she was. Her birth name was Edda Kathleen Ruston. Her father, Joseph Anthony Hepburn-Ruston, was an English banker, and her mother, Ella Hepburn-Ruston, was a Dutch baroness. Hepburn grew up in England, but moved to the Netherlands after her parents separated.

In 1948, she appeared in her first film, Nederland in Lessen, known then as Edda Hepburn. Following the Nazi invasion Hepburn was unable to leave the country until 1948, when she returned to London to study ballet on a scholarship at Arnhem Conservatory, at this time she began using the professional name of Audrey Hepburn (The Golden Years: Audrey Hepburn). In 1949, she made her London stage debut in the chorus of High Button Shoes. With her gamine-like features and graceful beauty, she was hand-picked by Colette herself to star in the 1951 Broadway production of Gigi, which had enormous critical acclaim.

From 1951 till 1952, she made a string of unremarkable films (Biography: Audrey Hepburn). In 1953, she was cast as a runaway princess, in the romantic comedy, Roman Holiday. Her beguiling performance landed her a Best Actress Oscar; from then on, Hepburn became an international star. In 1954, she married Mel Ferrer (The Golden Years: Audrey Hepburn). Hepburn earned another Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in Billy Wilder's romantic comedy, Sabrina. That year she returned to New York where she starred in Broadway's Ondine and received a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Drama.

In 1957, she appeared in the musical, Funny Face with Fred Astaire, and in Wilder's romantic comedy, Love in the Afternoon with Gary Cooper. In 1959, she received an Oscar nomination, the New York Film Critics Circle Award, and the British Film Academy Award for Best Actress for her leading role in the critically acclaimed drama The Nun's Story. In 1960 she had a son with Mel Ferrer named Sean (Hollywood: Audrey Hepburn). Hepburn earned another Oscar nomination, in 1961, for her performance as Holly Go lightly in Blake Edward's romantic comedy, Breakfast at Tiffany's.

That year she starred with Shirley MacLaine in The Children's Hour. She received a British Academy Award for Best Actress for the romantic mystery Charade. Also in 1963, she re teamed with her Sabrina costar William Holden for Paris and When It Sizzles. But it was her performance as Eliza Doolittle in 1964's My Fair Lady that Hepburn hit on the most lucrative film of her career, as well as earning yet again Oscar and Golden Globe Award nominations (S coco 41-42). She played a blind woman in Terence Young's thriller Wait Until Dark, earning a fifth Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1968, she and Mel Ferrer where divorced, and in 1969, she remarried to Andrea Dotti, with whom she had a son, Luca in 1970.

Hepburn and Dotti were also divorced, and she later married Dutch actor Robert Wonders (Name: Audrey Hepburn). After a nine-year absence, she returned to film in the romantic adventure, Robin and Marian, with Sean Connery, Richard Harris, and Ian Holm. She appeared in several more film productions, including her final role playing the angel, Hap, in Steven Spielberg's Always. Hepburn, along with John Gielgud, Helen Hayes and Rita Moreno were one of only four performers to have won all of the four major entertainment awards: Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony (Hollywood: Audrey Hepburn). A long-time activist for charitable causes, in 1988, Hepburn was named the official spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Among numerous other honors, in 1990, she was awarded the Cecil B DeMille Award, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. That same year she received the George Eastman Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 1993, she was presented with the Council of Fashion Designers of America Award. Posthumous awards included the Jean Hers holt Humanitarian Award for her work with UNICEF, a Grammy for Best Spoken Album for Children for Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales, and the Women in Film Crystal Award (The Golden Years: Audrey Hepburn).

In 1992, Hepburn was diagnosed with colon cancer, for which she underwent surgery in Los Angeles; however, she died from the disease on January 20, 1993 in Tolochenaz, Switzerland. Her death was mourned internationally as the loss of one of the favorite film actresses of all time, an icon to style, elegance, dignity, and charity. (Name: Audrey Hepburn). Nine years after Audrey Hepburn's death, the actress's legacy has fueled an almighty row between her two sons and residents of the Swiss village where she died. Audrey's relatives are up in arms after claiming a museum devoted entirely to her has become exploitative and is turning into "Graceland".

It is fifty years since the world first saw her in capri pants and ballet flats, and she still affects fashion. American sportswear owes an enormous amount to her; while Manolo Blahnik, who recently recreated the Sabrina heel in honor of her, says: "Like it or not, she will be the most important look of the 20th century. After his mother's death, Sean Ferrer founded the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund in November 1993 to perpetuate his mother's commitment to children. The fund donates money, clothes, books, vitamins, videos, and school supplies to needy children in this country and abroad (Name: Audrey Hepburn).

Both Audrey and Katharine Hepburn stood out amongst the other performers of their time, defining beauty in their own way. They were both so simple, yet so rare, and their performances where always powerful. While Audrey Hepburn did an excellent job of creating a confident Eliza from an insecure flower girl, Katharine Hepburn kept the ladylike image in her movie character even with leeches all over her in African Queen and during an extensive family illness in On Golden Pond. One thing that did set them apart was that Katharine was full of contradictions. Though always gorgeous, she is not usually thought of as a glamour girl; and Audrey was always thought to be the glamour of sophistication. Together proved their beauty was in being lady like.

They made it seem, glamour and even sexiness were attainable for women everywhere and that you can truly make beauty from the inside shine through..