| Katharine Houghton | |
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Houghton with Carl Betz as a guest star on Judd, for the Defense, 1968. |
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| Born | March 10, 1945 Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A |
| Spouse | Ken Jenkins (1970–present) |
Katharine Houghton (born Katharine Houghton Grant; March 10, 1945) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Joanna "Joey" Drayton, a Caucasian woman who brings home an African-American fiancé to meet her parents, in the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Katharine Hepburn, who played the mother of Houghton's character in the film, was in real life Houghton's aunt.
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Houghton was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the second child of Marion Hepburn and Ellsworth Grant. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and majored in philosophy and art. Houghton was named after her maternal grandmother, Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn. Her aunt, Katharine Hepburn, was instrumental in helping Houghton launch her career. The acting torch was further passed along in the family to actress Schuyler Grant, Houghton's niece.
Houghton has played leading roles in over sixty productions on Broadway, off-Broadway and in Regional Theatres across America. She won the Theatre World award for her performance in A Scent of Flowers off Broadway in 1969.
She has appeared in ten films, most recently The Last Airbender, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, in 2010.
Eleven of her plays have been produced. Her play Buddha was published in Best Short Plays of 1988. Her musical, "Bookends," premiered at NJ Rep Co. summer of 2007, received rave notices and garnered the theatre the highest box office sales in their eleven year history. Since then it has twice been part of The York Theatre’s Developmental Reading Series.
She has presented lectures at venues across the country including the 2001 Fall Concert & Lectures Series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at The Cosmopolitan Club. She lectured at MOMA again in June, 2008, presenting "Saucy Gamine, Reluctant Penitent, and Glorious Victor," a review of her aunt's roller coaster ride in Hollywood as reflected in three of her films.
Houghton is also a playwright and has translated the works of others for the stage, as well as writing her own plays.[1]
In 1975, Houghton wrote for her husband, actor/writer Ken Jenkins, a children's story, "The Wizard's Daughter," which is collected in the book, Two Beastly Tales, illustrated by Joan Patchen, her husband's first wife.
She lives today in Southern California with her husband and has three children.