Katharine Houghton facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Katharine Houghton
Houghton as a guest star on Judd, for the Defense, 1968
Born	Katharine Houghton Grant Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.
Alma mater	Sarah Lawrence College
Occupation	Actress, playwright
Years active	1965–present
Spouse(s)	Ken Jenkins ​ (m. 1970)​
Parent(s)	Marion Grant (mother)
Relatives	Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn (grandmother) Katharine Hepburn (aunt) Schuyler Grant (niece)
Family	Houghton

Katharine Houghton (born Katharine Houghton Grant on March 10, 1945) is an American actress and playwright. She is well-known for her role as Joanna "Joey" Drayton in the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. In this movie, she played a young woman who brings her fiancé from a different background home to meet her parents.

Interestingly, Katharine Hepburn, a famous actress who played the mother of Houghton's character in the film, was Houghton's real-life aunt! Katharine Houghton was even nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her acting in this movie. She also played Kanna, the grandmother of Katara and Sokka, in the 2010 film The Last Airbender.

Early Life and Education

Katharine Houghton was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She was the second child of Marion Hepburn and Ellsworth Grant. She was named after her grandmother, Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn. Her grandmother was a well-known person from Connecticut who worked to get women the right to vote (a suffragist) and helped make society better (a reformer).

Katharine Houghton went to Kingswood-Oxford School and then to Sarah Lawrence College. At college, she studied philosophy. Her aunt, Katharine Hepburn, was a big influence on her. Houghton decided to become an actress partly to help with a health condition that caused joint pain. While still in college, she started acting in summer plays. In 1965, she made her first appearance on Broadway in a play called A Very Rich Woman. She also had small roles on television.

Acting Career

Katharine Houghton's first movie role was in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). She played Joanna Drayton, the daughter, alongside actor Sidney Poitier. She tried out for the part, and she believed her aunt, who was also in the film, helped her get the role.

During the filming, the director, Stanley Kramer, decided that her character seemed too smart and spoke too clearly. He wanted her character to be seen as a more ordinary and sweet girl. A film critic named Arthur D. Murphy praised Houghton's acting. He wrote that she was "an attractive, talented girl who is off to a running start." Because the movie showed a kiss between people of different races, Houghton and the director received some angry letters and threats.

After Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Houghton found that she was often offered roles as a woman in relationships between people of different backgrounds. However, she decided to leave Hollywood because the movie scripts she was offered were not very exciting. She explained, "I turned down these projects and returned to the theater." She went on to play many important roles in over 60 plays. These plays were performed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in other theaters across the United States.

In 1970, she won the Theatre World Award for her acting in an Off-Broadway play called A Scent of Flowers. She returned to movie acting in 1988 in a comedy-drama film called Mr. North.

Houghton has also given talks at different places, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2008, she gave another talk there. It was about her aunt Katharine Hepburn's acting career in Hollywood.

Writing Career

Katharine Houghton is also a talented playwright, which means she writes plays. By 1990, she had written nine plays that were performed Off-Broadway and in regional theaters.

In 1975, Houghton wrote a children's story called "The Wizard's Daughter." This story was put into a book called Two Beastly Tales. The book also included a story written by her older brother, John Grant. In the early 1980s, she wrote and performed in a one-woman show called To Heaven in a Swing. This show told the story of Louisa May Alcott's life with her father, Amos Bronson Alcott.

She also helped write a short play called Buddha. This play explored a power struggle between a man and a woman. It was later published in a collection called The Best Short Plays of 1988–1989. Her musical Bookends first opened in New Jersey on July 19, 2007. This musical was inspired by two rare book dealers, Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern, whom Houghton had met while researching Louisa May Alcott. The songs for the musical were written by Dianne Adams and James McDowell. The musical received great reviews and brought the theater its highest ticket sales in 11 years.

Film and Television Roles

Katharine Houghton has appeared in many films and television shows.

Film Roles

Television Roles

See also

In Spanish: Katharine Houghton para niños

• Houghton family