Two-time Academy Award winner, Elizabeth Taylor died on Wednesday after a long battle of bad health, succumbing to congestive heart failure. Hollywood mourns the loss of the actress who is known for her eight marriages, striking violet eyes, involvement in AIDS activism, as well as her stellar film performances over the course of her long career.
She began her career at the age of 12, in National Velvet in 1944 opposite Mickey Rooney. Taylor’s resumé includes Little Women (1949), Father of the Bride (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), Giant (1956), Raintree County (1957), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Suddenly Last Summer (1959), Butterfield 8 (1960), Cleopatra (1963), The V.I.P.s (1963), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Taming of the Shrew (1967), Doctor Faustus (1967), A Little Night Music (1977), and The Flintstones (1994).
In 1960, when she signed up for Cleopatra, she was a highest paid actress of the time, with a one million dollar contract. During this production, she met one of the great loves of her life, Richard Burton who played Marc Antony. However, at this time, Taylor earned two million dollars because of working overtime on one of her most famous roles. Throughout production, Burton and Taylor were subject to much gossip and scandal because when they met, both were married to other spouses, but eventually married and divorced twice.
Her other publicized marriages included to hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr. and Eddie Fisher, who she married after her prior husband Michael Todd, Fishers’s best friend, died in a plane crash. Fisher was married to actress Debbie Reynolds when the two met; and he is also the father of Star Wars star Carrie Fisher. In addition, her last marriage was to Larry Fortensky, a man who she met during a repeated stint in the Betty Ford Clinic, in a ceremony at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in 1991.
In 1985, the actress received the prestigious Cecile B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press at the Golden Globe ceremony. As a co-founder of amfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research) that year, Taylor publicly came out in support of her Giant co-star Rock Hudson who died of the disease that same year. Then in 1993, she won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscars.
The L.A. Times recently reported that after reports of the legend’s passing came out, fans flocked to her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Also, the paper says that she was “laid to rest on Thursday at Forest Lawn in Glendale with a private service inside the Grand Mausoleum.”
Artist Andy Warhol was a big fan of Taylor’s and his portrait of her will be up for auction at Christie’s in May, reports DNA Info. It is likely that the silk-screened “Liz #5” is likely to go for $30 million dollars. Also, this piece belongs in a series of twelve paintings that Warhol “painted [in 1963] of the starlet while she was recovering from a tracheotomy.”
Some of Taylor’s most repeated quotes, courtesy of Brainy Quote, include: “Big girls need big diamonds.” “I don’t pretend to be an ordinary housewife.” “It’s not the having, it’s the getting.” “Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.” “I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.” Rest in Peace, Ms. Taylor.
Recent Comments