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The niece of superstar Katharine Hepburn (her mother was Hepburn's sister), Katherine Houghton attended Sarah Lawrence College before making her Broadway bow in Ruth Gordon's A Very Rich Woman (1965) She was then cast as Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn's daughter--and Sidney Poiter's fiance--in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Though Houghton did go on to make other films, she spent the majority of her career onstage. In 1969, she won an Obie Award for her performance in Scent of Flowers. Three years later, she co-founded Kentucky's Pilgrim Repertory Theatre, then spent the next two decades appearing in one Broadway production after another. In the early 1990s she reemerged on the film scene as a character actress, essaying such roles as the "Cheese Lady" in The Night We Never Met (1993) and Mrs. Hale in Ethan Frome (1994). In addition to her extensive acting credits, Katharine Houghton is a prolific novelist, screenwriter and playwright.