Cate Blanchett (top) as Katharine Hepburn in a scene from The Aviator and (above) Katharine Hepburn

London, Jan. 15: ?Acting,? said Katharine Hepburn, ?is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.?

You can hear her say it, in that strange combination of whinny and drawl that was one of the many distinctive features that made her a star through an unrivalled five decades. You can see her say it too, her fine, sharp features drawn back in a look of intelligent contempt.

All stars have their special presence. But Hepburn?s aura was one of the most unmistakable ? an image that seemed part and parcel of the way she lived her life. Her courage, her cleverness, her absolute sense of being her own woman found its way on to the screen in the parts she played and mingled with their smartness, wit and warmth to give millions a sense that they actually knew something about this most private of women.

Her emotional life did, in a sense, find its way onto the screen as her love affair with Spencer Tracy unfolded through a series of films from Woman of the Year (1942) to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, completed in 1967, 15 days before Tracy?s death.

But it is another of Hepburn's romances that is now being acted out in cinemas ? her years with Howard Hughes at the time when he was a celebrated aviator and Hollywood big-shot, before he retreated into madness, paranoia and darkened rooms. But, in this version of her life, Hepburn is played by Cate Blanchett and Hughes by Leonardo DiCaprio, in Martin Scorsese?s The Aviator.

The Aviator is gripping, beguiling and magical in its sense of the possibilities of film. DiCaprio gives a career-making performance and Blanchett is very fine.

But seeing a very good actress impersonate another very good actress, not just acting but living her life, makes us think of Hepburn?s remark. Acting really is the strangest profession ? and when actors pretend to be other actors it only exposes the limitations of the pretence they engage in to make their living.

According to A. Scott Berg?s excellent biography, Hepburn was rather excited when it was mooted that Vanessa Redgrave, an actress she much admired, would play her in a screen version of her memoir about the making of The African Queen. ?I don?t know who else could possibly do it,? she told him.

Well, Blanchett makes a fair fist of it. She catches Hepburn?s mannerisms and her voice. But more importantly, she honours her intelligence and her sense of difference. ?Aren?t we a fine pair of misfits?? she asks Hughes early on, and there?s an echo of Hepburn?s independence in her tone.

The Aviator captures, too, Hepburn?s kindness towards Hughes (she stayed in touch with him till the last years of his life), though, oddly, not the physical passion that Berg suggests made this ?the lustiest? relationship of the star's life.