Actress Katharine Hepburn has died at her home in Connecticut at the age of 96.
The actress, whose health had been failing for some time, had not spoken for several days and passed away peacefully, said her brother-in-law Ellsworth Grant.
Hepburn won a record four best actress Oscars during a career that spanned much of the last century.
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Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart on location in Africa for John Huston's 1951 film,
The African Queen.
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"She's the greatest actress of her age and with her passing that whole galaxy of great movie stars has ended," Mr Grant, who saw the screen legend shortly before she died, said. He said the cause of death was "simply complications from old age."
Seven years ago Hepburn moved back to the family mansion in Fenwick, an upper-class borough of Old Saybrook on Long Island Sound. She lived a quiet, reclusive life there and was rarely seen in public. Friends and relatives said she suffered from short-term memory loss.
Hepburn won her first Academy Award in 1933 for Morning Gloryand won again for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winterand On Golden Pond. She was nominated for the award eight other times.
Hepburn also starred in film classics such as Little Womenand The African Queen. Her last film was Love Affairwith Warren Beatty, released in the early 1990s.
Her independent spirit made her a role model to many women, and she was voted America's most admired woman in a 1985 Ladies Home Journalsurvey.
The actress did not escape criticism, however. Her performances were sometimes called cold, and Dorothy Parker famously said of Hepburn that she displayed "the gamut of emotions from A to B".