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Friday 25 March 2011
Elizabeth Taylor, last of the old-Hollywood screen sirens
Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen persona, stormy personal life and enduring fame and glamour made her one of the last of the old-fashioned movie stars, died yesterday at age 79.
Elizabeth Taylor, last of the old-Hollywood screen sirens
Three Academy Awards, eight marriages, seven husbands and a legion of fans
Agencies in Los Angeles 24 March 2011
Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen persona, stormy personal life and enduring fame and glamour made her one of the last of the old-fashioned movie stars, died yesterday at age 79.
She was surrounded by her four children when she died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre, where she had been in hospital for about six weeks, her publicist said.
“My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humour, and love,” her son, Michael Wilding, said.
“We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mum having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts.”
Taylor was the most blessed and cursed of actresses, the toughest and the most vulnerable. She had extraordinary grace, wealth and beauty, and won three Academy Awards, including a special one for her humanitarian work.
She was the most loyal of friends and a defender of gays in Hollywood when Aids was still a stigma. But she was afflicted by ill health, failed romances (eight marriages, seven husbands) 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.”
Over a five-decade career she won two Academy Awards for best actress, including in the 1966 classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, one of many films where she played opposite her two-times husband Richard Burton.
In later years she retired from the public gaze, although she notably attended the 2009 funeral of her long-time friend Michael Jackson, and raised funds to battle HIV/Aids.
Born in London on February 27, 1932, she was evacuated to California with her American parents in 1939. She debuted in 1942 in There’s One Born Every Minute, and by 1944 had become a child star with National Velvet, the story of a girl who rides her horse to victory at the Grand National disguised as a boy. In this film, a fall from a horse left her with a back injury that she struggled with all her life.
Schooled on the set, it wasn’t long before her attention turned to men.
She married for the first time in 1950, aged 18, to playboy hotel chain heir Nicky Hilton. The marriage lasted 203 days, collapsing amid verbal and physical abuse after a lavish Hollywood wedding and a three-month European honeymoon.
Taylor moved on, and by 1952 she had tied the knot with British matinee idol Michael Wilding, 19 years her senior. They had two children, Michael and Christopher.
Though Taylor said Wilding gave her stability, it wasn’t enough. She filed for divorce in 1956, and within days of the separation producer Michael Todd, 49, proposed.
Tough and domineering, he was Taylor’s first great love. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Frances, in August 1957, but seven months later tragedy struck: Todd was killed in a plane crash in New Mexico.
Devastated, Taylor was accompanied at Todd’s funeral by his best friend, singer Eddie Fisher, whose wife actress Debbie Reynolds stayed home in California to take care of Taylor’s children.
From grieving widow to homewrecker, Taylor made a lightning change of roles, stealing Fisher from Reynolds in an affair that scandalised America. They married in 1959, but the public outrage nearly killed Taylor’s flourishing acting career.
She had just finished filming the Tennessee Williams classic Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) with Paul Newman, and had already earned critical raves with Giant (1956), the Texas oil patch epic with Rock Hudson and James Dean.
But her flame only burned brighter. She made Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer in 1959 with Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift.
The following year, she won her first Oscar for best actress for her portrayal of a high-class call girl in Butterfield 8. Taylor is said to have hated the movie. Before the 1961 ceremony, she was admitted to hospital from a nearly fatal bout with pneumonia and underwent a tracheotomy. The scar was bandaged when she appeared at the Oscars to accept her best actress trophy.
To a standing ovation, she hobbled to the stage. “I don’t really know how to express my great gratitude,” she said in an emotional speech. “I guess I will just have to thank you with all my heart.”
“Hell, I even voted for her,” Reynolds later said.
Then came Cleopatra (1962) - “surely the most bizarre piece of entertainment ever perpetrated”, Taylor said of what was at the time the most expensive in Hollywood history. Taylor was paid a record US$1 million.
The movie flopped, but the Roman set was the backdrop for a sizzling love affair that made headlines around the world: Taylor and her married leading man, Burton. They married in March 1964 in Montreal.
Art most effectively imitated life in the adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - in which Taylor and Burton played mates who fought viciously and drank heavily. She took the best actress Oscar for her performance as the movie’s venomous Martha and again stole the awards show, this time by not showing up. She refused to thank the academy upon learning of her victory and chastised voters for not honouring Burton.
Taylor and Burton divorced in June 1974, married again in October 1975 in Botswana and divorced again in August 1976. Before he died, Burton commented: “We never really split up - and we never will.”
The marriage left Taylor an alcoholic, and her career in decline. A seventh marriage to Virginia Senator John Warner, from 1976 to 1982, failed to cure the blues.
In and out of the Betty Ford Clinic in the 1980s, she overcame her alcoholism and a dependence on painkillers, and emerged as a champion in the cause of Aids victims.
Her advocacy for Aids research and for other causes earned her a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993. As she accepted it, to a long ovation, she declared, “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.”
In 1991, she stunned the world by marrying husband No8: Larry Fortensky, a 40-year-old construction worker she met in rehab. They parted amicably three years later. “I was taught by my parents that if you fall in love, if you want to have a love affair, you get married,” she once said. “I guess I’m very old-fashioned.”
Taylor’s health continued to deteriorate. In 1997, she underwent surgery to have a brain tumour removed and in 2006 she appeared on US television to deny rumours she had Alzheimer’s disease.
In 2009, she underwent heart surgery, tweeting afterwards: “It’s like having a brand new ticker.”
In tune with the media to the end, she kept in touch through her Twitter account.
“I like the connection with fans and people who have been supportive of me,” Taylor said in an interview this year for Harper’s Bazaar. “And I love the idea of real feedback and a two-way street, which is very, very modern. But sometimes I think we know too much about our idols and that spoils the dream.”
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Elizabeth Taylor, last of the old-Hollywood screen sirens
Three Academy Awards, eight marriages, seven husbands and a legion of fans
Agencies in Los Angeles
24 March 2011
Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen persona, stormy personal life and enduring fame and glamour made her one of the last of the old-fashioned movie stars, died yesterday at age 79.
She was surrounded by her four children when she died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre, where she had been in hospital for about six weeks, her publicist said.
“My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humour, and love,” her son, Michael Wilding, said.
“We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mum having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts.”
Taylor was the most blessed and cursed of actresses, the toughest and the most vulnerable. She had extraordinary grace, wealth and beauty, and won three Academy Awards, including a special one for her humanitarian work.
She was the most loyal of friends and a defender of gays in Hollywood when Aids was still a stigma. But she was afflicted by ill health, failed romances (eight marriages, seven husbands) 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.”
Over a five-decade career she won two Academy Awards for best actress, including in the 1966 classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, one of many films where she played opposite her two-times husband Richard Burton.
In later years she retired from the public gaze, although she notably attended the 2009 funeral of her long-time friend Michael Jackson, and raised funds to battle HIV/Aids.
Born in London on February 27, 1932, she was evacuated to California with her American parents in 1939. She debuted in 1942 in There’s One Born Every Minute, and by 1944 had become a child star with National Velvet, the story of a girl who rides her horse to victory at the Grand National disguised as a boy. In this film, a fall from a horse left her with a back injury that she struggled with all her life.
Schooled on the set, it wasn’t long before her attention turned to men.
She married for the first time in 1950, aged 18, to playboy hotel chain heir Nicky Hilton. The marriage lasted 203 days, collapsing amid verbal and physical abuse after a lavish Hollywood wedding and a three-month European honeymoon.
Taylor moved on, and by 1952 she had tied the knot with British matinee idol Michael Wilding, 19 years her senior. They had two children, Michael and Christopher.
Though Taylor said Wilding gave her stability, it wasn’t enough. She filed for divorce in 1956, and within days of the separation producer Michael Todd, 49, proposed.
Tough and domineering, he was Taylor’s first great love. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Frances, in August 1957, but seven months later tragedy struck: Todd was killed in a plane crash in New Mexico.
Devastated, Taylor was accompanied at Todd’s funeral by his best friend, singer Eddie Fisher, whose wife actress Debbie Reynolds stayed home in California to take care of Taylor’s children.
From grieving widow to homewrecker, Taylor made a lightning change of roles, stealing Fisher from Reynolds in an affair that scandalised America. They married in 1959, but the public outrage nearly killed Taylor’s flourishing acting career.
She had just finished filming the Tennessee Williams classic Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) with Paul Newman, and had already earned critical raves with Giant (1956), the Texas oil patch epic with Rock Hudson and James Dean.
But her flame only burned brighter. She made Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer in 1959 with Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift.
The following year, she won her first Oscar for best actress for her portrayal of a high-class call girl in Butterfield 8. Taylor is said to have hated the movie. Before the 1961 ceremony, she was admitted to hospital from a nearly fatal bout with pneumonia and underwent a tracheotomy. The scar was bandaged when she appeared at the Oscars to accept her best actress trophy.
To a standing ovation, she hobbled to the stage. “I don’t really know how to express my great gratitude,” she said in an emotional speech. “I guess I will just have to thank you with all my heart.”
“Hell, I even voted for her,” Reynolds later said.
Then came Cleopatra (1962) - “surely the most bizarre piece of entertainment ever perpetrated”, Taylor said of what was at the time the most expensive in Hollywood history. Taylor was paid a record US$1 million.
The movie flopped, but the Roman set was the backdrop for a sizzling love affair that made headlines around the world: Taylor and her married leading man, Burton. They married in March 1964 in Montreal.
Art most effectively imitated life in the adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - in which Taylor and Burton played mates who fought viciously and drank heavily. She took the best actress Oscar for her performance as the movie’s venomous Martha and again stole the awards show, this time by not showing up. She refused to thank the academy upon learning of her victory and chastised voters for not honouring Burton.
Taylor and Burton divorced in June 1974, married again in October 1975 in Botswana and divorced again in August 1976. Before he died, Burton commented: “We never really split up - and we never will.”
The marriage left Taylor an alcoholic, and her career in decline. A seventh marriage to Virginia Senator John Warner, from 1976 to 1982, failed to cure the blues.
In and out of the Betty Ford Clinic in the 1980s, she overcame her alcoholism and a dependence on painkillers, and emerged as a champion in the cause of Aids victims.
Her advocacy for Aids research and for other causes earned her a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993. As she accepted it, to a long ovation, she declared, “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.”
In 1991, she stunned the world by marrying husband No8: Larry Fortensky, a 40-year-old construction worker she met in rehab. They parted amicably three years later. “I was taught by my parents that if you fall in love, if you want to have a love affair, you get married,” she once said. “I guess I’m very old-fashioned.”
Taylor’s health continued to deteriorate. In 1997, she underwent surgery to have a brain tumour removed and in 2006 she appeared on US television to deny rumours she had Alzheimer’s disease.
In 2009, she underwent heart surgery, tweeting afterwards: “It’s like having a brand new ticker.”
In tune with the media to the end, she kept in touch through her Twitter account.
“I like the connection with fans and people who have been supportive of me,” Taylor said in an interview this year for Harper’s Bazaar. “And I love the idea of real feedback and a two-way street, which is very, very modern. But sometimes I think we know too much about our idols and that spoils the dream.”
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