Jason Bateman reveals the brutal advice Katharine Hepburn gave him on set

Jason Bateman is reflecting on a difficult but valuable acting lesson he received from Hollywood legend Katharine Hepburn.

The 57-year-old actor recalled working with the Oscar-winning actress on the 1994 television movie This Can't Be Love, where he starred alongside Hepburn and Anthony Quinn.

At the time, Bateman was just 25 years old, while Hepburn was 86, and he admitted that sharing emotional scenes with the legendary performer became a major learning experience.

Speaking on the Good One podcast, Bateman remembered filming a scene that required him to cry. He said he was focused on forcing the emotion and trying hard to deliver the moment.

“I was really trying, I was really squeezing it,” he recalled.

However, Hepburn stopped him during the scene and gave him a blunt piece of advice.

“Oh, stop acting!” she told him.

Although the comment was difficult for Bateman to hear at the time, he later realized the impact of her words and how they helped him grow as a performer.

“Once I was being real and stopped trying to manipulate the audience and whatnot and be raw, it flowed, it worked,” he explained.

Bateman described Hepburn’s advice as a painful but important lesson that ultimately shaped his approach to acting.

“It was a really great piece of advice that was painful to hear at the beginning, but ended up being very helpful,” he said.

After rising to fame as a child and teen actor through shows like The Hogan Family, Bateman experienced a quieter period in the 1990s as several projects ended quickly.

He later made a major comeback with Arrested Development in 2003 and expanded his career into directing and producing, including his work on Netflix’s Ozark, where he also starred as the lead.