Becoming Kate Hepburn

I was going to say something about Katherine Hepburn, but Verlyn Klinkenborg has said it better: "...a perfectly selfless egotism, a person so ravished with self-confidence that she had the capacity to illuminate everyone around her." Anthony Hopkins recalled, in an interview on All Things Considered yesterday, that when as a very young actor he was playing her son in "The Lion in Winter," Hepburn told him, "Don't act." Meaning, I suppose, Just do the part as yourself, without trying to be anybody else. That was the thing about Hepburn: she didn't act. Even when she was playing Eleanor of Aquitaine, she was always Hepburn.

Hopkins of course does act; his "Titus Andronicus" is nothing like his "Hannibal Lecter." But he comes from a different tradition. Anyway, I was planning to spend the rest of the morning being Kate Hepburn, practicing self-confidence -- but wait, that's a contradiction! I think instead I should just try to take her advice: Don't act. So if you run into me today, you'll just find me.