Although the role of glucocorticoid hormones in systemic defense reactions to stress-eliciting factors has been well documented long ago, the question on their implication in molecular events underlying cellular response to stress has remained opened. The most of diverse physiological effects of these hormones are primary ones, mediated through the specific receptor protein present in almost all mammalian cells, that functions as a typical inducible transcription factor, The observations indicating that glucocorticoid and other steroid hormone receptors are associated with heat shock proteins in multiprotein complexes of as yet not fully understood functional significance, were the first to suggest a possible connection between glucocorticoid hormones action and cellular heat shock response. Meanwhile, the data on: (a) the effects of heat and chemical stresses on the glucocorticoid receptor structural and functional properties, (b) the role of steroid hormones in regulation of heat shock protein synthesis, and (c) the chaperoning and regulation of the steroid receptors by heat shock proteins have been accumulated. The purpose of the present paper is to briefly summarize the data along these lines from a number of laboratories, including our own, providing evidence for an interdependence of the two important cellular activities performed by heat shock proteins and glucocorticoid receptor, both of which serve basic cellular functions not only under stressful, but also under conditions of undisturbed homeostasis.