Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor, who rose from child actor to become one of Hollywood’s most talented actresses with a tumultuous life, died on March 21 at age 79.
She died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles surrounded by her four children after having been hospitalised six weeks ago with congestive heart failure, a statement from her publicist Sally Morrison said.
Taylor was nominated for five Oscars and won the best actress honour twice. She won a third Oscar for her humanitarian work. She was named Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth on December 31, 1999.
“My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humour, and love. Though her loss is devastating to those of us who held her so close and so dear, we will always be inspired by her enduring contribution to our world,” son Michael Wilding said in a statement.
Liz’s two worlds
The violet-eyed Taylor, who began her movie career at age 10 and was often ranked in fan polls as the most beautiful woman on screen, was plagued by health problems for many years.
Taylor’s life had two worlds. She was a powerful actress who won an Academy Award for playing a call girl in Butterfield 8 in 1960, another for her portrayal of a foul-mouthed alcoholic in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1967, and earned Oscar nominations for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly, Last Summer and Raintree County.
On the other hand, her personal life set a Hollywood standard for glamour and tumult. After the death of her third husband, film producer Mike Todd, in 1958, she found herself in a well-chronicled love triangle with singer Eddie Fisher and his wife actress Debbie Reynolds, before marrying Fisher.
While filming the lavishly produced Cleopatra in 1961, she started a torrid, tabloid-chronicled affair with Richard Burton, who played Mark Antony and who was also married at the time.
Taylor-Burton saga
Taylor’s relationship with Burton was a saga in itself. The two strong-willed actors wed in 1964 after she divorced Fisher, and Burton bestowed furs and diamonds, including a $1 million pear-shaped jewel, on Taylor while publicly praising her “wonderful bosom”.
But they also hurled invective at one another and were brilliantly cast in the movie of dramatist Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? about a bitter, verbally abusive couple.
“We enjoy fighting,” Taylor once said. “Having an out-and-out, outrageous, ridiculous fight is one of the greatest exercises in marital togetherness.”
Plagued by ill health
She was tortured by ill health, failed romances and personal tragedy.
“I think I’m becoming fatalistic,” she said in 1989. “Too much has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic.”
Her eight marriages — including two to Burton — and a lifelong battle with substance abuse, physical ailments and overeating made Taylor as popular in supermarket tabloids as in classic film festivals.
Taylor disclosed in November 2004 that she had congestive heart failure. But she still periodically dismissed reports that she was at death’s door, saying she used a wheelchair only because of chronic back problems that began at age 12 when she fell from a horse.
“Oh, come on, do I look like I’m dying?” she said in May 2006 in a rare television interview on CNN’s Larry King Live. “Do I look like or sound like I have Alzheimer’s?” Tabloids report such things “because they have nothing else dirty to write about anybody else,” she said.
When she turned 75 the following year, she was asked about the secret to her longevity and quipped: “Hangin’ in.”
She accepted her many health problems with a stoic attitude.
“My body’s a real mess,” Taylor told W magazine in 2004. “If you look at it in the mirror, it’s just completely convex and concave.”
Humanitarian side
The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18, a screen goddess at 19 and a widow at 26.
In later years, she was a spokeswoman for several causes, most notably AIDS research. Her work gained her a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993.
As she accepted it, she told a worldwide television audience: “I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being — to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame.
She died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles surrounded by her four children after having been hospitalised six weeks ago with congestive heart failure, a statement from her publicist Sally Morrison said.
Taylor was nominated for five Oscars and won the best actress honour twice. She won a third Oscar for her humanitarian work. She was named Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth on December 31, 1999.
“My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humour, and love. Though her loss is devastating to those of us who held her so close and so dear, we will always be inspired by her enduring contribution to our world,” son Michael Wilding said in a statement.
Liz’s two worlds
The violet-eyed Taylor, who began her movie career at age 10 and was often ranked in fan polls as the most beautiful woman on screen, was plagued by health problems for many years.
Taylor’s life had two worlds. She was a powerful actress who won an Academy Award for playing a call girl in Butterfield 8 in 1960, another for her portrayal of a foul-mouthed alcoholic in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1967, and earned Oscar nominations for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly, Last Summer and Raintree County.
On the other hand, her personal life set a Hollywood standard for glamour and tumult. After the death of her third husband, film producer Mike Todd, in 1958, she found herself in a well-chronicled love triangle with singer Eddie Fisher and his wife actress Debbie Reynolds, before marrying Fisher.
While filming the lavishly produced Cleopatra in 1961, she started a torrid, tabloid-chronicled affair with Richard Burton, who played Mark Antony and who was also married at the time.
Taylor-Burton saga
Taylor’s relationship with Burton was a saga in itself. The two strong-willed actors wed in 1964 after she divorced Fisher, and Burton bestowed furs and diamonds, including a $1 million pear-shaped jewel, on Taylor while publicly praising her “wonderful bosom”.
But they also hurled invective at one another and were brilliantly cast in the movie of dramatist Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? about a bitter, verbally abusive couple.
“We enjoy fighting,” Taylor once said. “Having an out-and-out, outrageous, ridiculous fight is one of the greatest exercises in marital togetherness.”
Plagued by ill health
She was tortured by ill health, failed romances and personal tragedy.
“I think I’m becoming fatalistic,” she said in 1989. “Too much has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic.”
Her eight marriages — including two to Burton — and a lifelong battle with substance abuse, physical ailments and overeating made Taylor as popular in supermarket tabloids as in classic film festivals.
Taylor disclosed in November 2004 that she had congestive heart failure. But she still periodically dismissed reports that she was at death’s door, saying she used a wheelchair only because of chronic back problems that began at age 12 when she fell from a horse.
“Oh, come on, do I look like I’m dying?” she said in May 2006 in a rare television interview on CNN’s Larry King Live. “Do I look like or sound like I have Alzheimer’s?” Tabloids report such things “because they have nothing else dirty to write about anybody else,” she said.
When she turned 75 the following year, she was asked about the secret to her longevity and quipped: “Hangin’ in.”
She accepted her many health problems with a stoic attitude.
“My body’s a real mess,” Taylor told W magazine in 2004. “If you look at it in the mirror, it’s just completely convex and concave.”
Humanitarian side
The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18, a screen goddess at 19 and a widow at 26.
In later years, she was a spokeswoman for several causes, most notably AIDS research. Her work gained her a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993.
As she accepted it, she told a worldwide television audience: “I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being — to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame.
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