Elizabeth Taylor
A Hollywood legend, Elizabeth Taylor is also one of the world's most famous women--remembered for her eight marriages, her acting skills and beauty, vast jewelry, multiple illnesses and flamboyant lifestyle. Born in London but raised in the old Hollywood studio system, this British Dame is also one of the few who can justly be called Hollywood "royalty."
Nominated for Academy Awards for several years in a row, Elizabeth finally won in 1960 for "Butterfield 8", a role she detested. Elizabeth was the first actress to be paid one million dollars for a film role--l963's "Cleopatra". Stripped of the trappings of glamour, Elizabeth's greatest role was her dynamic performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), for which she deservedly won her second Academy Award.
She is a true screen legend
Biography
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born on February 27, l932, in London, England. Although her mother had a brief career stint as a stage actress in the US, her parents were actually art dealers from St. Louis, Missouri and relocated to London to open a gallery. Eventually, the Taylors moved back to the States and settled in Los Angeles just before war broke out in Europe in 1939.Following a screen test for Universal Studios, nine-year-old Elizabeth was signed to a contract, and made her screen debut in 1942's There's One Born Every Minute. She was signed to MGM in 1942, and it was there that she had early success as a child actor.She really came into prominence with "National Velvet playing Velvet Brown, a young girl who trains a horse to win the Grand National. More parts followed and by 1949, she had graduated to her first adult role, as the romantic lead in Conspirator.
Elizabeth was a grown 18-year-old when she married hotel heir Nicky Hilton in May 1950, the same year she starred in the classic, Father of the Bride. Hilton was the first in a series of seven husbands, and the marriage lasted less than nine months. Elizabeth's fairy tale was shattered, beginning on their honeymoon, by Hilton's physical and emotional abuse. The marriage was over by January 1951. Also in that year, while on loan to Paramount, she received her first serious notice by critics for her performance in A Place In The Sun, directed by George Stevens.
Liz wed for the second time in February 1952. Her new husband was Michael Wilding, a British actor twenty years her senior, with whom she had two sons. Michael Jr. was born in 1953, and Christopher in 1955. The marriage was deteriorating by the mid 1950's, with the couple living more as brother and sister than husband and wife and on January 30, 1957 they got divorced. Three days later, she married movie producer Mike Todd in Acapulco. Todd was 24 years her senior, but Taylor acknowledges that of all her marriages, this was her happiest. The couple had a daughter, Elizabeth "Liza" Todd in August of that year.
Elizabeth Taylor received her first Oscar nod as Best Actress for 1957's Raintree County. Four days before the ceremony, Todd, flying in his private plane named "The Lucky Liz," was killed when the plane crashed over New Mexico. Friends rallied to Elizabeth's side, most notably Eddie Fisher, Todd's best friend and best man at Liz and Mike's wedding. At the time of Todd's death, Elizabeth was filming Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opposite newcomer Paul Newman. This film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' popular stage play earned six Oscar nominations, including Elizabeth's second in the Best Actress Oscar category.
In 1959 Taylor married Eddie Fisher and also received a third Oscar nomination for Suddenly, Last Summer. While Oscar eluded her for a third time, she was honored with the Golden Globe for Best Actress. For her next role, as a call girl in Butterfield 8, she was nominated for and won, the Best Actress award. In 1963, she became the highest paid movie star up until that time when she accepted US$1 million to play the title role in the lavish production of Cleopatra for 20th Century Fox. It was during the filming of that movie that she worked for the first time with future husband Richard Burton, who played Mark Antony. Movie magazines had a field day when Taylor and Burton began an affair during filming; both stars were married to other people at the time.
Elizabeth and Richard Burton married in 1964 and in 1966 Taylor earned her second Best Actress Oscar for her role as a middle-aged, alcoholic house wife in the film adaptation of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, co-starring Richard Burton, The film, shot in black and white is a masterpiece, and is regarded by many film historians as the greatest performances that Taylor and Burton made. Both she and Burton were now global superstars and courted and feted wherever they went.
The booze and flamboyant excess of their lifestyle wreaked havoc on the Burton's marriage, and they were divorced on June 26th, 1974 but they remarried on a reserve in Botswana on October 10th, 1975. The reunion was not to last, and they were again divorced within ten months. Elizabeth met politician John Warner on a blind date, and the two were married on December 4th, 1976. Elizabeth relocated her life to Warner's farm in Virginia. They divorced November 7, 1982. In 1988, Taylor reentered the Betty Ford Center, after she had again become dependant on alcohol. There she met husband number seven, construction worker Larry Fortensky and the two were married on October 6th, 1991 at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch with guests including Nancy Reagan. They divorced in 1996.
