Katharine Hepburn Trivia
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50 free Katharine Hepburn trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Katharine Hepburn trivia quiz follows the actress from a progressive Hartford childhood of cold baths and golf lessons through Bryn Mawr, a Broadway break and the RKO contract that made her a star with her third film. It covers the comedown too: the flops, the box office poison label, and the comeback she engineered by owning the rights to The Philadelphia Story. The second half is the long partnership with Spencer Tracy, from Woman of the Year to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, the leech-covered shoot of The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart, Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, the record fourth Oscar for On Golden Pond, the only Academy Awards ceremony she ever attended, and the trousers, the tremor and the Fenwick home where she died at 96. Awards questions test the record gap between her first and last nominations and the studios, directors and co-stars who kept coming back. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Audrey Hepburn and Classic Hollywood quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actress broke Katharine Hepburn's record of 12 Oscar acting nominations in 2003?
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep passed her with a 13th nomination, for Adaptation, and has since reached 21; Hepburn's four acting wins, all for Best Actress, were still the record in 2026.
Q 02In which Connecticut city was Katharine Hepburn born in 1907?
Hartford
Hartford was home to her mother, who led Connecticut's campaign for women's votes, and Hepburn credited her outspoken parents for her own independence.
Q 03At which college did Hepburn begin acting?
Bryn Mawr
Bryn Mawr, her mother's college too, gave her a degree in history and philosophy in 1928; she went straight from graduation into the theatre, sure, she later admitted, that she would be famous.
Q 04What daily habit did young Hepburn keep, believing "the bitterer the medicine, the better"?
Ice-cold baths
Ice-cold baths were her doctor father's own routine, which he thought invigorating; she kept up cold-water swimming for most of her life.
Q 05In which sport did the teenage Hepburn reach the semi-final of a Connecticut young women's championship?
Golf
Golf was one of many sports her father pushed on his children, raised to keep in top physical condition; in later years she swapped it for daily tennis and swimming.
Q 06For years Hepburn gave her birthday as November 8, a date that really belonged to whom?
Her older brother
Her older brother Tom died in 1921, and it was the teenage Hepburn who found him; she then used his November 8 birthday as her own for decades.
Q 07In which book did Hepburn finally reveal her true birth date?
Me: Stories of My Life
Me: Stories of My Life (1991) put it bluntly: she was born on May 12, 1907, 'despite everything I may have said to the contrary', after years of claiming to be two years younger.
Q 08Which wit quipped that Hepburn's acting in the Broadway play The Lake ran the gamut of emotions 'from A to B'?
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker's jibe summed up the reviews of The Lake; rather than tour in a failing show, Hepburn paid its producer to close the production.
Q 09For which studio did Hepburn make her first film, A Bill of Divorcement, in 1932?
RKO
RKO kept her under contract through an Oscar win and a run of flops, until in 1938 she bought herself out rather than make a B picture the studio had assigned her.
Q 10Which star played Hepburn's father in her screen debut, A Bill of Divorcement (1932)?
John Barrymore
John Barrymore played her troubled father, newly home from years in an asylum; the newcomer's reviews were so strong that her studio signed her to a long-term contract.
Q 11For which 1933 film, only her third, did Hepburn win her first Academy Award?
Morning Glory
Morning Glory cast her as Eva Lovelace, a stage-struck newcomer; the script had been tailored for the studio's biggest star, Constance Bennett, until Hepburn read it and insisted the part be hers.
Q 12Which of the March sisters did Hepburn play in Little Women (1933)?
Jo
Jo, the tomboy writer, suited her so well that she later defied anyone to be as good in the part as she had been; the film was one of the biggest hits of its day.
Q 13Which director made ten films with Hepburn?
George Cukor
George Cukor picked her out from a screen test and became a lifelong friend: Hepburn and Spencer Tracy lived for years in a guest house on his estate.
Q 21Which film casts Hepburn and Tracy as married lawyers?
Adam's Rib
Adam's Rib sets them against each other over a wife who shot at her unfaithful husband, and at home the two lawyers still call each other Pinky.
Q 22Which married writing team wrote two Tracy–Hepburn comedies?
Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon
Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon were friends of the pair and wrote both scripts with them in mind; Kanin later turned the friendship into a memoir, Tracy and Hepburn.
Q 23In which comedy is Hepburn a champion athlete managed by Spencer Tracy?
Pat and Mike
Q 14Which film first paired Hepburn with Cary Grant, with her disguised as a boy?
Sylvia Scarlett
Sylvia Scarlett cast Grant as a Cockney con man who teams up with the disguised Sylvia; audiences stayed away, yet he and Hepburn went on to make three more films together.
Q 15What animal does Hepburn's flighty heiress lose in Bringing Up Baby (1938)?
A leopard
A leopard named Baby, a pet her brother has sent from Brazil, gives the film its title; poor ticket sales dented her standing for a while.
Q 16What label did the Independent Theatre Owners of America attach to Hepburn in 1938?
Box office poison
Box office poison was the verdict of a cinema owners' list that also named Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Mae West; Hepburn answered by buying out her studio contract.
Q 17Which of Hepburn's partners helped her secure the film rights to The Philadelphia Story, her comeback vehicle?
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes's backing gave her control of the hit play's screen rights, so she could sell them to MGM on condition that she starred, with a director of her own choosing.
Q 18Which playwright wrote Holiday and Without Love and modelled the heroine of another Broadway hit on Hepburn?
Philip Barry
Philip Barry's other hit was The Philadelphia Story, whose Tracy Lord he modelled on Hepburn herself, years after she had been dropped from the cast of one of his earlier plays.
Q 19Which co-star won his only Academy Award for Best Actor for The Philadelphia Story?
James Stewart
James Stewart played the reporter covering the wedding; Hepburn had wanted Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy for the male leads and got Stewart and Cary Grant instead.
Q 20Which 1942 film was the first of nine that Hepburn made with Spencer Tracy?
Woman of the Year
Woman of the Year was a script Hepburn sold to MGM herself, asking for Tracy, whom she had never met, to play the sportswriter opposite her political columnist.
Pat and Mike was written to show off Hepburn's real sporting skill, and champions such as Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Gussie Moran turn up in it playing themselves.
Q 24Which director's political drama State of the Union did Hepburn join at days' notice, replacing Claudette Colbert?
Frank Capra
Frank Capra lost Colbert after disagreements with her just before shooting; Hepburn, who had been helping Tracy with the script, already knew the part and stepped in.
Q 25The African Queen (1951) was Hepburn's first film made in which format?
Technicolor
Technicolor came late to a star of almost twenty years' standing, and its bulky three-strip cameras had to be hauled out to rough African locations.
Q 26Besides Uganda, where in Africa did Hepburn and Bogart shoot The African Queen on location?
The Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo shoot was rough on cast and crew: Hepburn was sick during filming, while Bogart boasted that he stayed healthy by drinking whiskey instead of the local water.
Q 27Which 1955 David Lean romance, filmed in Venice, earned Hepburn an Oscar nomination?
Summertime
Summertime had her fall backwards into a Venetian canal for one scene; the dirty water left her with an eye infection that troubled her for the rest of her life.
Q 28In which Tennessee Williams adaptation did Hepburn play Violet Venable opposite Elizabeth Taylor?
Suddenly, Last Summer
Suddenly, Last Summer was a miserable shoot for Hepburn, who ended it by spitting in disgust at the film-makers; accounts name director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, producer Sam Spiegel or both.
Q 29For which Eugene O'Neill adaptation did Hepburn win the Best Actress award at Cannes?
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Long Day's Journey Into Night was shot for under half a million dollars, yet all four of its stars came home from Cannes with acting prizes, Hepburn for the morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone.
Q 30Tracy died 17 days after finishing which film with Hepburn?
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner cast them as husband and wife; Hepburn had put her own career on hold for nearly five years to nurse Tracy, and the film won her a second Oscar.