ACTORS ON KATE

"Katharine Hepburn is one of the most stimulating women I know. She's unfeminine in that she scorns gossip, backbiting, and logrolling. She has an intelligent curiosity about everything. She spits out her opinions no matter how unpopular they may be. She makes no professional or social concessions. She's a gal I'd like to have on my side in a jam."

"I still spend my life wishing I looked like Katharine Hepburn!"

"Katie and Bette Davis have to top my list because they're so vastly talented and strong-willed and indestructible. Both on and off the screen Kate is one of the great women, great persons, of our time. Funny; I never resented her for a moment at Metro; I never regretted not getting a part she got. I'd sneak on her sets when I could, and admire, just plain admire. I keep throwing the word 'class' around, but she's the top in that department."

"I think every actress in the world looked up to her with a kind of reverence, a kind of sense of 'Oh, boy - if only I could be like her!' We never looked at her with envy or jealousy because she worked with such grace and wit and charm. You only wish that one day you could be like her."

"I think there are very few great American eccentrics; she was very European in that sense. What made her eccentric was her absolutely indomitable style of living life as she chose to live it."

"I'd like a life like Katharine Hepburn's in terms of work. She matured. She made the changes. Like Martha Graham."

"What I learned from her was simplicity. She's a living example that stardom doesn't have to be synonymous with affectation or ego."

"Katharine Hepburn was the template upon which many smart 20th-century women modeled themselves, but her style and uncompromising substance - a mix of sass, brass and class - were uniquely her own."

"She was the ultimate forerunner, and the ultimate in her acting style and personal style - didn't she say pantyhose was the devil's invention? And she was able to maintain a private persona....Hepburn always seemed like she was just slightly above all of the stuff that was trite and makes the world go round in this business."

"She, in history, was as important [in her era] as Elizabeth the First was in hers...a great, rare female."