- Title: FILE: Actress Elizabeth Taylor dies aged 79, her publicity agent confirms
- Date: 23rd March 2011
- Summary: LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, UNITED STATES (FEBRUARY 27, 2007) (REUTERS) ( ** BEWARE FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY **) ELIZABETH TAYLOR ARRIVING AT 75TH BIRTHDAY PARTY IN LAS VEGAS ENTERS HOTEL LOBBY IN WHEELCHAIR AS MEMBERS OF THE PRESS SING "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" TO HER
- Embargoed: 7th April 2011 13:00
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- Location: Usa, France, United Kingdom
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- Country: USA
- Topics: Entertainment,People
- Reuters ID: LVA8HARW3IOYOEMDSNWNMO6ANT01
- Story Text: In her prime, Oscar winner Elizabeth Taylor was one of the most alluring actresses on the screen while also setting a Hollywood standard for glamor and personal tumult.
Her image as the pure, violet-eyed girl who burst onto the big screen at the age of 10 was dissipated by an unending series of headline stories over her eight marriages, her jewels, weight, health problems and addictions.
Despite the tabloid aspect of her life, Taylor was recognized as a fine actress and won Academy Awards for playing a call-girl in "Butterfield 8" in 1960 and in 1967 for her portrayal of a foul-mouthed alcoholic wife in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
Taylor was courted by a string of rich, famous and powerful men, but her romance with Richard Burton, another star of volatile temperament, was the most tempestuous, with every move in their love-hate relationship chronicled in newspapers around the world. They co-starred in many films, often as man and wife.
Born in London to American parents Taylor said many times that she never wanted to be an actress but was pushed into it by her mother, former actress Sara Sothern Taylor.
Soon after her 10th birthday she landed the lead in the 1942 film "Lassie Come Home." But her younger years were crowned by her role two years later in "National Velvet," about a young girl's love for a horse.
After playing a string of girl-next-door roles, the first hint of dramatic promise was in "A Place in the Sun" (1950).
She confirmed her powers in 1958 as Maggie in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," which was completed only weeks after the death of her third husband, film producer Mike Todd.
Taylor was only 18 when she married 21-year-old hotel heir Conrad "Nicky" Hilton, and their marriage lasted 205 days. At 19 she wed British actor Michael Wilding, a man twice her age and, she admitted, a father substitute. That lasted 4 1/2 years and produced two children, Michael and Christopher.
In 1957, just after a delicate spinal operation, the 24-year-old Taylor married Todd, who had a son older than his new wife and a grandson as well.
She gave birth to a daughter, Liza, later that year before Todd was killed in the crash of his plane, "The Lucky Liz," in March 1958.
Ten months later Taylor married singer Eddie Fisher, Todd's best friend, who divorced actress Debbie Reynolds on the same day. Taylor, raised a Christian Scientist, converted to Judaism for that marriage.
Taylor's film career prospered and in 1961 she was paid 1 million dollars (USD) to star in the title role of "Cleopatra." Taylor was true to the character and deserted Fisher for a torrid affair with the celluloid Antony -- Richard Burton.
She divorced Fisher in 1964 and married Burton.
During the good times Burton would rhapsodize about his wife's "wonderful bosom" and buy her expensive furs and diamonds -- including the Cartier diamond, which cost more than $1 million. But he also would scream at her to leave him and go hang herself.
The couple's work together in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" is widely recognized as their finest on-screen collaboration.
They divorced in June 1974 with Taylor saying, "We have loved each other too much."
Sixteen months later, Taylor and Burton were remarried in Botswana, but the second marriage lasted only eight months.
Taylor did not stay single long. On Dec. 4, 1976, she married John Warner, a former U.S. Navy secretary who later became a U.S. senator from Virginia. Life in Washington did not appeal to Taylor, and they divorced in 1982.
After a triumphant Broadway run in "Little Foxes," Taylor reunited with Burton in 1983 for a production of Noel Coward's "Private Lives" that was panned by the critics and was a disaster at the box office.
Taylor had in the meantime ballooned in weight to as much as 180 pounds and was lampooned by comedians.
In 1983 she entered the Betty Ford Clinic in California to overcome what she described as dependency on alcohol and prescribed drugs.
With fewer acting roles coming her way, Taylor raised money for AIDS research and launched her own line of fragrances.
In November 1988, Taylor was back in the Ford clinic for dependency on painkillers taken for chronic back problems. Two years later she almost died after entering a Los Angeles hospital for treatment of a sinus condition and developed viral pneumonia.
During another stay in the Ford clinic in 1990 she met Larry Fortensky, a building labourer being treated for alcoholism.
It was an unlikely match -- the glamorous movie superstar with a Beverly Hills mansion and the lowly construction worker -- but in 1991 Taylor shocked the world by marrying Fortensky at pop singer Michael Jackson's home. She was 59 and he was 39.
Despite the mismatch, the marriage endured four years and four months before Taylor filed for divorce in February 1996.
Taylor was especially close to Jackson and staunchly defended him while he was being tried and then acquitted on child molestation charges. Taylor said she gravitated toward him because "we're very much alike. We both had horrible childhoods."
Meanwhile, Taylor's medical problems continued. She had three hip-replacement operations and suffered congestive heart failure, a benign brain tumour, skin cancer and pneumonia. In later years she often used a wheelchair due to back pain.
After the 1980s, movie roles for Taylor became rare. One of her last screen appearances was in the 2001 television movie "These Old Broads," co-starring one-time personal rival Debbie Reynolds, Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins.
In May 2000, the London-born actress received the title "Dame," the female equivalent of a knighthood, from Queen Elizabeth. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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