The Lion in Winter (1968) gave Katharine Hepburn her third Academy Award for Best Actress, as Eleanor of Aquitaine, a queen imprisoned by her husband yet still plotting to control the future of his kingdom.
Opposite Peter O’Toole as Henry II, Hepburn played Eleanor with wit, fury and a deep sense of history. The film, set over Christmas in 1183, is a battle of words as much as of wills, and Hepburn’s Eleanor dominates every scene she enters.
The performance showed Hepburn in her late sixties at the height of her powers. Eleanor is proud, wounded and endlessly clever, and Hepburn made her one of the great screen queens.
Image: Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Katharine_hepburn_woman_of_the_year_cropped.jpg