Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in London on February 27, 1932. Her parents, Francis Lenn Taylor and Sara Sothern, were originally from Arkansas City, Kansas and were living in England. They returned to the United States on the onset of World War II. 

Colorized Film still of Elizabeth Taylor, late 1950s.

FILM CAREER

Elizabeth Taylor began her movie career as a child actress in the early 1940s, making her screen debut in a minor role in There's One Born Every Minute (1942). Her breakthrough role in National Velvet (1944), made her one of Hollywood's most popular teenage stars. 

Mickey Rooney and Taylor in National Velvet (1944), 

Taylor made the transition to adult roles in the early 1950s, when she starred in the comedy Father of the Bride (1950) and the following year received critical acclaim for her performance in the drama A Place in the Sun alongside Montgomery Clift. 

Working steadily during the 1950s, Taylor's notable movies  included; Giant (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Suddenly last Summer (1959), Butterfield 8 (1960).

In 1963, Taylor played the lead role in the hugely expensive Cleopatra opposite Richard Burton, This was, of course, the film that kick started their fiery and passionate romance (plus two marriages).

Richard Burton as Mark Antony with Taylor as Cleopatra in Cleopatra (1963)

Elizabeth Taylor had a record 65 costume changes playing the title role in Cleopatra, and received Hollywood's first million dollar contract for her part. 

Taylor won two Academy Awards for best actress, the first for her performance in Butterfield 8, the second for her performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In 1999 Taylor won the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, a lifetime achievement award. 

She has appeared twice on The Simpsons – once as herself and once saying Maggie's first word "Daddy." It took Taylor 24 takes to get the voice of a baby, because Matt Groening said: 'They were always too sexual.'"

PRIVATE LIFE

Taylor often received media attention because of her seven husbands and eight marriages. Her marriage partners were Nicky Hilton, Michael Wilding, Mike Todd, Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton (twice), John Warner and Larry Fortensky.

She had two sons with Michael Wilding and a daughter with Mike Todd. Taylor also adopted a daughter while married to Richard Burton. 

Taylor with her third husband Mike Todd and her three children in 1957

On January 29, 1951, Elizabeth Taylor was divorced from U.S. hotel heir Conrad Hilton Jnr — the first of her eight marriages, to seven men, to fail.

Elizabeth Taylor almost called off her wedding to film producer Mike Todd on February 4, 1957. The ceremony, at the beach resort of Acapulco, Mexico, was delayed for more than an hour before Todd convinced the highly strung actress to go through with it. Singer Eddie Fisher was best man and his wife Debbie Reynolds was maid of honor. 

Fisher went on to marry Taylor after an affair following Todd's death in a plane crash.

Taylor's marriages to Richard Burton lasted from March 15, 1964 to June 26, 1974 and from October 10, 1975 to July 29, 1976. Their first wedding was at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Montreal.

Richard Burton indulged Taylor's love of jewellery. He once gave her a £127,000 ring "just because it was a Tuesday."

Taylor made 11 films with Richard Burton, plus one made-for-TV movie in 1973 entitled Divorce His, Divorce Hers, about a couple whose marriage had ended. Just a year after that film's release, the real-life couple of Taylor and Burton got divorced for the first time.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton secretly married for the second time at a game park in Botswana on October 10, 1975, 16 months after getting divorced.

In 1991 Michael Jackson gave Elizabeth Taylor away to Larry Fortensky during her eighth wedding, held at Jackson's 2,700-acre Neverland estate near Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Taylor was the godmother of two of Michael Jackson's children. 

FASHION

Taylor was the first celebrity to create her own collection of fragrances. In collaboration with Elizabeth Arden, Inc., she began by launching two best-selling perfumes – Passion in 1987, and White Diamonds in 1991. 

£40m ($50m) worth of Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds perfume was bought in 2010. making it the best-selling celebrity perfume. According to biographers Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger, Taylor earned more money through the fragrance collection than during her entire acting career.

Taylor promoting her first fragrance, Passion, in 1987. By SMU Central University Libraries

Elizabeth Taylor allegedly wouldn't let anyone else on her movie sets wear the same shade of lipstick as her.

Her vast collection of fine jewelry purchased by her and given to her as gifts are well documented in her jewelry autobiography My Love Affair With Jewelry that came out in 2002.

Eighty pieces of jewellery that had belonged to Elizabeth Taylor sold for $116 million (£74.9 million) in 2011, including the fabulous Krupp diamond, the 33.19 carat ring given to her by Richard Burton. He bought it at an auction for $ 307,000 (£ 230,000) in 1968 and presented it to Taylor on board their yacht while moored on the Thames in London.

BELIEFS 

Elizabeth Taylor converted to Judaism on March 28, 1959, taking the Hebrew name Elisheba Rachel, a year after the death of her Jewish third husband Mike Todd. The ceremony, consisting of a prayer read in Hebrew by a rabbi with Miss Taylor replying, took place in the Temple Israel of Hollywood. She converted, she said, "because, in a way, it was what I told my husband I would do."

Taylor was refused entry to Egypt in 1962 because of her conversion to Judaism in 1959 and her Israeli sympathies. But Egypt's government relented when Cleopatra came out in 1963 and they realized the great publicity could make them millions.

In 1976, Taylor offered herself as a hostage to save more than 100 Air France passengers hijacked by terrorists in Uganda before Israeli forces rescued them.

From the mid-1980s, Taylor supported HIV and AIDS programs; she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985, and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1993. 

Picture below shows congresswoman Nancy Pelosi alongside Taylor, who is testifying in 1990 before the House Budget Committee on HIV-AIDS Funding.

By Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco, CA 

Elizabeth Taylor advised: "Milk is my recipe for lovely skin, sparkling eyes and a well-rounded figure. Without these, you cannot be attractive."

HEALTH AND DEATH 

Elizabeth Taylor‘s voluminous eyelashes were caused by a rare genetic mutation which was responsible for her having two rows of eyelashes.

Taylor was pronounced dead in 1960 while playing a high-class call girl in Butterfield 8, due to a rare strain of pneumonia. But she rose from her deathbed to pick up an Oscar for the film.

She suffered many years of ill health. In 2004, Taylor was diagnosed with congestive heart failure for which she underwent cardiac surgery five years later. 

In early 2011, new symptoms related to congestive heart failure caused her to be admitted into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for treatment. Taylor died on March 23, 2011, surrounded by her four children at the same medical center in Los Angeles at the age of 79.

Elizabeth Taylor wanted to be late for her own funeral, so the coffin arrived 15 minutes after the announced start time.