“I was like, ‘You mean professionally?’” the “Arrested Development” star remembered.

Jason Bateman reveals Katharine Hepburn told him to ‘stop acting,’ offering ‘really great’ but ‘painful’ advice

"I was like, 'You mean professionally?'" the "Arrested Development" star remembered.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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June 20, 2026 12:43 p.m. ET

Jason Bateman; Katharine Hepburn in 1992. Credit:

Dia Dipasupil/Getty; Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty

- Jason Bateman starred alongside Katharine Hepburn in the 1994 TV movie *This Can't Be Love*.

- The *Arrested Development* actor said that he was "really trying" to cry on camera during a difficult scene.

- Bateman said that Hepburn told him to "stop acting."

Jason Bateman is sharing a piece of sage advice he received from a Hollywood icon.

The *Arrested Development* star recalled working with Katharine Hepburn on the 1994 TV movie *This Can't Be Love* during an interview with Vulture's *Good One* podcast. Bateman explained that he portrayed Hepburn's driver in the film, so there was "sort of like a *Driving Miss Daisy* type of dynamic between the two of us."

Katharine Hepburn and Jason Bateman in 'This Can't Be Love'.

Davis Entertainment/courtesy Everett Collection

The *DTF St. Louis* star said that one particular moment in the film required him to tap into a well of intense emotion. "We were doing this one scene, just me and her, and my character had to cry," he recalled. "It's hard to cry on cue. So I was really trying, I was really squeezing it."

Bateman struggled through the scene, which led Hepburn to give him some blunt advice. "She stopped in the middle of the take and she said, 'Oh, stop acting,'" he remembered. "I was like, 'You mean professionally?'"

But Hepburn wasn't trying to get Bateman to switch career paths. "She said, 'No, just say it! Stop trying to [cry],'" he recalled, explaining that he understood that she wanted him to play the scene naturally instead of forcing an inauthentic emotion. "I said, 'Yeah, it's a great note and just be real.'"

Katharine Hepburn in 1938.

ullstein bild via Getty

Hepburn's advice immediately helped Bateman get through the scene. "Once I was being real and stopped trying to manipulate the audience and whatnot and be raw, it flowed, it worked," he said. "So it was a really great piece of advice that was painful to hear at the beginning, but ended up being very helpful."

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*This Can't Be Love* starred Hepburn and Anthony Quinn as aging actors who reconnect decades after their brief marriage in the 1940s, and mirrored numerous details from Hepburn's real life. The project featured one of the actress' final screen performances, as she retired from acting after the theatrical film *Love Affair* and the TV movie *One Christmas*, which were both released in 1994.

Elsewhere in the podcast, Bateman shared his pick for the greatest living actor. "Daniel Day-Lewis," he opined. "It's real tough to touch him."

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Bateman went on to name two more performers who take his breath away. "I will say that Christian Bale, as far as being somewhere near my age, is a guy that's just a beast. I really, really admire him," he said before shouting out an Oscar-winning performer whom he's directing in the Netflix film *The Cackling of the Dodos*. "The guy I'm working with right now, Sam Rockwell, is one of my absolute favorites. That's a very humbling thrill for me right now."

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