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her grief that for many years she used Tom's birthday—November 8—as her own, only revealing her true birth date in her 1991 autobiography. The psychological impact of Tom's death was immense. She later wrote that she felt responsible for not having been there to save him, and she carried this guilt with her for decades. It was during this period of isolation that she developed the fierce self-reliance and emotional armor that would characterize her throughout her life. She learned to depend on no one but herself, a lesson she would never forget. "I was a very strange girl," she admitted later. "The death of my brother made me very independent. I realized that life is uncertain, and I had better do what I want." Her parents, deeply worried about her mental state, arranged for her to be tutored at home for two years. She emerged from this period with a renewed determination to live life on her own terms, but also with a certain emotional guardedness that she would maintain for the rest of her life. She rarely discussed Tom's death publicly and only acknowledged it in her autobiography late in life. The tragedy shaped her profoundly and gave her a philosophical acceptance of life's cruelties that served her well in the unpredictable world of show business. Chapter Three: Bryn Mawr and the Discovery of Acting In 1924, at the age of seventeen, Hepburn enrolled at Bryn Mawr College, primarily to satisfy her mother, who was an alumna. At first, she was deeply uncomfortable and struggled academically. She was socially awkward, still grieving for her brother, and found the rigid social structure of the women's college stifling. She spent much of her first year feeling like an outsider. It was a production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in her sophomore year that changed everything. She was assigned a small role, but it was enough to ignite a passion. She discovered that on stage, she could be someone else, could shed her shyness and awkwardness and become powerful and articulate. Acting, she later said, "was the only thing that made me feel alive." Roles in college plays were conditional on good grades, so she worked tirelessly to improve her marks in order to continue performing. A lead role in a production of The Woman in the Moon in her senior year received such a positive response that it cemented her determination to pursue a theatrical career. But Hepburn was no naive dreamer. She approached her career with the same practical, headstrong determination she had learned from her parents. She graduated in 1928 with a degree in history and philosophy, but she had no intention of becoming a teacher or a scholar. She had a plan: she would conquer Broadway. "I decided to become an actress," she said, "because I knew I was good at it. It wasn't a whim. It was a conviction." Chapter Four: The Grueling Apprenticeship — Broadway Rejection and Persistence The day after graduating, Hepburn boldly traveled to Baltimore to meet a producer running a repertory theatre company and convinced him to cast her. Her Broadway debut came in November 1928 in a play called These Days, which closed after just eight performances. It was a devastating blow, but she refused to be defeated. Instead, she worked as an understudy and took small roles in stock companies, often facing brutal setbacks. She was fired multiple times—once from a play after the playwright declared she "looks a fright, her manner is objectionable, and she has no talent"—but she was rehired when no other actress could be