Katherine Hepburn’s odd relationship with Glenn Close: “She’s got these big, fat, ugly feet”
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy / TCM)
Sun 4 January 2026 22:30, UK
Glenn Close saw out 2025 with an incredible performance in the latest Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man. In it, she plays Martha Delacroix, a devout church member grappling with the haunting spectre of her older sister, who smoked, fucked, and, worst of all, wore bright red lipstick.
Close is fabulous as ever, the central puzzle of the movie circling her nuanced character. She keeps the audience guessing until the last minute, with a haunting gaze and small, precise facial manoeuvres. Still, Close can’t take all the credit, despite the incredible handle on restraint and emotive face-acting she had; the character never would’ve come to be without Katherine Hepburn.
Close has previously admitted that Hepburn was the main influence on her career: to Deadline, she recalled watching Hepburn’s performance on The Dick Cavett Show. The year was 1973, and Close was painting scenery for the theatre of the school she worked in. The pastel colours, the yellows and pinks, faded into the lull of the cafeteria chaos as Close realised, paintbrush in hand, that she was destined for bigger things.
Close recalled of the formative moment, “[Hepburn] was so phenomenal, so herself. So the next day I went to the head of the [theatre] department and I said, ‘Please nominate me for a series of auditions.’ And from that, I got my first job that fall.” Sometimes, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Close would never have guessed she’d end up starring opposite Kim Kardashian from that one decision, but hey, life has a way of throwing curveballs at you when you least expect it.
The moment would come full circle on a rainy day in 1990, at the Kennedy Center honors. Close finally met Hepburn and was able to tell her about the important role the star had unwittingly played in Close’s life. A real pinch-me, always-meet-your-heroes moment for Close. Hepburn was cool as ever: “She was wearing a black raincoat, a white shirt, black pants and highly polished black Reeboks, and everyone else was in gowns and jewels. And she looked fabulous.”
A little while later, falling back into the grace of old-school communication, Hepburn wrote Close a letter. “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?” It read. For Close, this letter became a prized possession, a real marker of success, of a life well lived.
And yet. Hepburn, who passed away in 2003 at the age of 96, didn’t seem to have as much respect for the All’s Fair actor. In fact, in Kate Remembered, the book written by A Scott Berg and released only 12 days after her death, Berg deemed Close Hepburn’s least favourite actor on stage. Berg, dissecting his close relationship with Hepburn and spilling details on their most intimate moments, went on to reveal what else Hepburn said of Close: “She’s got these big, fat, ugly feet.”
It was a cruel sentence, uttered when Hepburn returned from a matinee of the Tom Stoppard play, The Real Thing. Close starred opposite Jeremy Irons. Together, they opened the show on Broadway. According to Berg, Hepburn stuck with the theme of her criticism, adding, “And she goes around barefoot in the play and almost ruins the whole thing.”
Thankfully, Close never took the criticism to heart. “I had to laugh when I read that,” she admitted gracefully. To her own detriment, she even reiterated the story to Fox News: “I know she came to see us three times when I was on Broadway in The Real Thing. That’s where the feet thing came from. I was barefoot in it.”
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