Vintage Katharine Hepburn clip goes viral, reigniting trans speculation: ‘The world wasn’t ready’
Viral video shares Katharine Hepburn’s views on gender and gender roles (Ernest Bachrach/John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
Viral video shares Katharine Hepburn's views on gender and gender roles (Ernest Bachrach/John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
LGBTQ+ fans have praised legendary actress Katharine Hepburn after a resurfaced interview showed her speaking about her gender, revealing that she had shaved her head and gone by the name Jimmy in her youth.
On what would have been the actress’ 118th birthday (12 May 2025), a TikTok went viral in which Katharine Hepburn discussed being a “tomboy” with NBC News.
Speaking to Katie Couric in 1991, Hepburn explained: “I was called Jimmy, and I hated being a girl. I really hated it. I just shaved my head and thought, ‘I’m a boy’.”
She added that her parents approved, joking that her shaving her head meant they didn’t have to “brush my hair or wash it”.
The TikTok also contained clips of a number of Hepburn’s iconic gender-bending roles, including her drawing a fake moustache on her face and wearing a suit in Sylvia Scarlett, sword-fighting, and cutting her long hair.
Queer fans loved the interview, but also expressed sadness, with one TikTok user commenting: “The world wasn’t ready for you Jimmy, I’m sorry.”
Another wrote: “I hope she’s in another timeline being the boy she never got to be in this.”
Was Katharine Hepburn actually trans?
It’s not possible to definitively say if Katharine Hepburn, who died in 2003 at the age of 96, was what we would describe today as “trans.” Also, although rumours have swirled about Hepburn being lesbian or bisexual since the 1930s, the actress herself never confirmed that she was LGBTQ+.
She is, however, an icon for many LGBTQ+ fans, who admire her outlook on gender and female gender roles, which were considered unconventional at the time.
She insisted on wearing trousers in the 1930s, when women doing so was considered a “scandal”, to the point where studio staff reportedly hid her trousers to stop her from wearing them.
Hepburn’s biographer, Bill Mann, told Advocate in 2006 that he would “consider ‘transgender’ a better way to understand Katharine Hepburn than anything else”.
“She knew somehow that she wasn’t a woman the way a woman ought to be. She had a woman’s body but felt in her heart and soul that she was a man. Everyone says, ‘Oh, we already know that – she was a liberated woman who rebelled against traditional roles for women!’ But I think it went deeper,” Mann explained.
“I deliberately didn’t use the word transgender in the book [the 2006 biography Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn], because it implies something too contemporary. But at the same time, I think it’s the only way to understand her.”
He added: “I think that, had she lived in another time… she might have been open to that discussion.”
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