Short Takes : Hepburn Faces Grave Truth

Katharine Hepburn says that getting old is “a bore” and that death will be a relief from reporters.

Asked if she fears death, the 83-year-old actress told People magazine in its Nov. 5 issue: “Not at all. Be a great relief. Then I wouldn’t have to talk to you.”

So why did she agree to an interview?

“Soon it will be too late, and I’d rather do this myself than have others do it after I’m dead. They never get things straight,” she said.

Getting old, she said, is a “B-O-R-E, when you find you’ve begun to rot.”

A book of photographs shot over the last 15 years by John Bryson, “The Private World of Katharine Hepburn,” will be published in November.

Hepburn is also hard at work on an autobiography, which she calls “a bunch of stories.” It is due out in August.