Glenn Close Says Katherine Hepburn Inspired Her To Act

More than 50 years later, Glenn Close is recalling the piece of wisdom from a screen legend that got her interested in acting.

The Academy Award nominee recently described her “huge respect” for Katherine Hepburn and revealed how the late actress inspired her to take up the profession while she was attending Virginia’s College of William & Mary.

“The thing I’ve always loved about Hepburn is she seemed to really know who she was,” Close recently told People.

She recalled seeing Hepburn appear on an The Dick Cavett Show in 1973 while painting scenery for her school’s theater.

“I remember she said, ‘No regrets, no regrets.’ Fabulous,” she recounted. “She was so phenomenal, so herself. So the next day I went to the head of the [theater] department and I said, ‘Please nominate me for a series of auditions.’ And from that, I got my first job that fall.

Close recalled she “went straight from college to my first job on Broadway the fall that I graduated,” adding: “Then I did theater for six years before I got into my first movie, which is The World According to Garp, and basically have never looked back.”

The Deliverance actress also got the chance to meet Hepburn and tell her about the experience after her tribute to the actress at the 1990 Kennedy Center Honors. “She was wearing a black raincoat, a white shirt, black pants and highly polished black Reeboks,” recalled Close. “And everyone else was in gowns and jewels. And she looked fabulous.”

Close said Hepburn later sent her “the most fantastic letter,” which read, “Aren’t we lucky to be in this terrible profession, this terrifying profession, and, let’s face it, this delicious way to spend your life?”

Hepburn, who won four Oscars for Best Actress in Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968) — for which she tied with Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl — and On Golden Pond (1981), died at age 96 in 2003.