Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center

One of the entertainment industry’s most honored actresses, Christine Baranski is an Emmy, two-time Tony, Screen Actors Guild, Drama Desk and American Comedy Award winner. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Baranski received her big break in Tom Stoppard’s hit Broadway comedy “The Real Thing,” directed by Mike Nichols, for which she won a Tony Award and Drama Desk Award.

Ms. Baranski went on to earn a second Tony Award for her performance in Neil Simon’s “Rumors.” She also won an Emmy, American Comedy and SAG Award for her role in the hit series “Cybill,” in addition to three subsequent Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. She received a total of 5 Emmy nominations for her guest roles on “Frasier” and “The Big Bang Theory.” As the formidable “Dian Lockhart,” Ms. Baranski received six Emmy nominations and two Critics’ Choice Television Award nominations on CBS’s “The Good Wife.” She currently stars as the character in the critically acclaimed spin-off “The Good Fight” on CBS All Access.

As a young intern at the American Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, CT, Ms. Barnaski was inspired by Ms.  Hepburn’s portrayal of Rosalind in “As You Like It.”

A resident of Madison, Ann Nyberg is WTNH-TV’s longest-serving anchor/reporter in station history and has been nominated for multiple Emmys. In addition to anchoring several evening newscasts, she also produces and hosts the show “Nyberg,” an on-air and online show she developed to get people’s stories out to the masses.

In November of 2015, Ann was inducted into the prestigious Silver Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) Boston/New England Chapter - an honor given to television professionals who have made significant contributions to their community and to the vitality of the television industry. In 2017, Ann was recognized, during the year of Harper's Bazaar Magazine's 150th anniversary, as a woman of success who pays it forward.

Ann has been a storyteller her entire life, which all started with a diary her mother gave her for Christmas when she was just 8 years old, and the rest is history. As she says, “I never met a story I didn’t want to tell.” Her first book, "Slices of Life, A Storyteller's Diary" debuted in October 2015, and is based on her diary. Her second book, released October 2016, is on the legendary Connecticut film actress, Katharine Hepburn. It is called "Remembering Katharine Hepburn: Stories of Wit and Wisdom About America's Leading Lady."

Glenn Close is a seven-time Academy Awards nominee and winner of three Tony Awards and three Emmys. She made her feature film debut in The World According to Garp, for which she received an Oscar nomination. She was subsequently Oscar-nominated for The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, Albert Nobbs, and most recently, The Wife. Ms. Close won two consecutive Emmys along with a Golden Globe Award, and three SAG nominations for her portrayal of ‘Patty Hewes’ on Damages. She won a third Emmy for her title role performance in Serving in Silence: the Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (for which she also received a Peabody Award as executive producer).

In 1974, Close made her professional, theatre, and Broadway debut in The Phoenix Theatre’s Love for Love, directed by Harold Prince. Over her forty-three year career, she has always returned to the theater, receiving Tony Awards for Death and the Maiden, The Real Thing and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Sunset Boulevard, as well as an Obie Award for The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs. Last spring, Close made her London-West End debut in a new production of Sunset Boulevard, for which she won a London Evening Standard Award and was nominated for an Olivier Award. She is presently starring, to great acclaim, in that same production, on Broadway.

Ms. Close’s decision to continue in the acting profession in part stems from viewing one of the most famous and first ever television interviews with Katharine Hepburn conducted by Dick Cavett in 1973. Ms. Hepburn became an inspiration to Ms. Close and welcomed this role, finding small ways to support Ms. Close through communications and appearances at events honoring Ms. Close.

Mr. Cavett has lead a life of insight and humor, and is arguably best known for his self-named talk show ‘The Dick Cavett Show’ and his remarkable ability for in-depth and sophisticated interviews and conversation. His television show boasts one of the most famous interviews with Katharine Hepburn, who rarely agreed to interviews.

“One of the facts of life of doing a talk show is that some of the most interesting people in the world won’t do them. One of them is Katharine Hepburn,” Mr. Cavett said at the opening of his now famous two-part interview with Ms. Hepburn in 1973 on The Dick Cavett Show. “She has spent most of her life avoiding the press and I wish I had a nickel for every time someone has said, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful just to sit and listen to that woman talk?’ Well, one afternoon recently, never having been on television, she agreed to come into my studio for a test only to check things out to see how it looked and felt. She checked the cameras, the lights, these chairs, the temperature in the studio, she pronounced the carpet ugly and then she surprised me by suddenly saying, ‘Why don’t we just go ahead and do it now?’ And we did.”