Katharine Hepburn

Raised by progressive parents in Connecticut, Hepburn caught Hollywood's eye after strong Broadway notices and won her first Academy Award for her third film, Morning Glory, in 1933. A string of box-office failures followed, including the now-beloved Bringing Up Baby in 1938, and the studios wrote her off. She engineered her own comeback by buying out her RKO contract, securing the rights to The Philadelphia Story, and selling them only if she could star - the film succeeded and restored her footing. Through the 1940s she formed a twenty-six-year screen partnership with Spencer Tracy across nine films, while privately living on her own terms: one brief marriage in her youth, then decades of independence. She kept working into her eighties, finding late-career strength in roles like The African Queen's Rose Sayer and winning three more Oscars after age sixty for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, and On Golden Pond. She refused interviews, wore trousers when it scandalized, and never played by the industry's social script. She made her last screen appearance at eighty-seven and died in 2003 at ninety-six, by then canonized by the American Film Inst