Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor Headshot

Actress

Birth Name: Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor

Birth Date: February 27, 1932

Death Date: March 23, 2011

Birth Place: Hampstead, London, England, UK

Spouses: Eddie Fisher, Michael Wilding, Richard Burton, Mike Todd

Children: Michael Wilding Jr.

With the arguable exception of Marilyn Monroe, no other star from Hollywood's Golden Age exerted a more enduring hold on the public's imagination than the violet-eyed beauty Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor twice won the Best Actress Academy Award, for "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), respectively, and the American Film Institute ranked the five-time Oscar nominee seventh on its list of the "25 Greatest Women Screen Legends" in 1999. She also gave indelible performances in such classics as "National Velvet" (1944), "A Place in the Sun" (1951), "Giant" (1956) and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958) - all of which added to her reputation as one of the most talented, larger-than-life actresses to have ever graced the silver screen.

Ironically, the raven-haired, violet-eyed screen siren elicited more pity than awe when she entered the world on Feb. 27, 1932. The second child of Francis and Sara Taylor, American expatriates living in London, the infant Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor suffered from hypertrichosis; which left her tiny body completely covered in soft black hair. Although her parents were understandably alarmed, their worries vanished after a few weeks when the unsightly hair fell away, revealing their newborn daughter's exquisite beauty.

While Francis Taylor managed his uncle's art gallery, Sara lavished attention on Elizabeth, whom she simultaneously indulged and controlled. Both Elizabeth and her adored older brother Howard, three years her senior, were raised in privilege. Every whim was indulged, but at the same time, Sara carefully groomed Elizabeth to carry herself with poise, particularly after the four-year-old captivated an audience with her impromptu solo performance during a dance recital. A former actress with a handful of 1920s-era stage roles to her credit, Sara immediately recognized her daughter's nascent star quality. The same could not be said, however, of Hollywood film executives.

In 1941, two years after the Taylors left London to settle in Los Angeles, Sara Taylor finagled a six-month contract for nine-year-old Elizabeth at Universal Pictures; the ever enterprising stage mother had befriended the wife of Universal Pictures chairman J. Cheever Chowdin. Then a shy and sheltered little girl, Elizabeth made her inauspicious screen debut in a Universal short film, "There's One Born Every Minute" (1942) co-starring Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer of "Our Gang" fame. Taylor's performance as a bratty little girl in this quickie programmer failed to impress Universal's casting director Dan Kelly, who complained that Taylor's eyes were "too old" and that she did not "have the face of a kid." Subsequently dismissed by Universal, Taylor soon rebounded with an MGM contract, thanks to her father's friendship with producer Samuel Marx.

In the midst of shooting "Lassie Come Home" (1943), starring Roddy McDowall and Donald Crisp, Marx was desperately looking for a young girl to play the small but pivotal role of Priscilla, the granddaughter of a rich Yorkshire landowner. Despite her inexperience - she had no formal training, just her mother's incessant coaching - Taylor nevertheless beat out four other actresses for the part. The resulting film did little to boost her profile on the MGM lot; in fact, the studio promptly loaned her out to 20th Century Fox for a brief role in "Jane Eyre" (1944).

Although her mother micro-managed Taylor's life and career, the 12-year-old MGM contract player was no longer the malleable naïf, thrust onto a soundstage, as she had been during her brief Universal tenure. Determined to play the coveted role of Velvet Brown, the horseback riding heroine of "National Velvet," Taylor launched a major charm offensive against Lucille Ryman Carroll, the head of MGM's talent department. She won the demanding role, which required her to play an English country girl masquerading as a boy to ride her beloved horse in the Grand National Steeplechase.

Under Clarence Brown's sensitive direction, Taylor gave a spirited and utterly assured performance in this heartwarming adaptation of Enid Bagnold's novel, co-starring Mickey Rooney, Anne Revere, and another fresh-faced newcomer, Angela Lansbury. Thanks to "National Velvet," Taylor finally became a bona fide movie star. Unlike many of her classmates at the studio's little red schoolhouse, she never went through a career-ending "awkward stage." The ethereally lovely adolescent blossomed into a drop-dead gorgeous ingénue, equally believable playing teenagers and older women alike.

In 1949, the same year she played Amy March in MGM's glossy remake of "Little Women," the studio cast the 17-year-old as Robert Taylor's wife in the espionage thriller, "Conspirator." She acquitted herself nicely in both roles, but the proverbial jury was still out as to whether Taylor was an actress of depth, rather than simply a glamorous leading lady.

If not for director George Stevens, Taylor might have continued providing little more than eye candy in MGM films, like the crowd-pleasing "Father of the Bride" (1950), starring Spencer Tracy. Stevens, however, saw in Taylor the vulnerability, passionate abandon, and inner strength to play Angela Vickers, the ravishing socialite heroine of "A Place in the Sun" (1951), his adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's classic novel, An American Tragedy. Not since "National Velvet" had she tackled such a demanding role - or given such a multi-dimensional performance - as she did here, portraying patrician girlfriend of a poor but rabidly ambitious factory worker, so desperate to get ahead that he commits murder.

Challenged by Stevens and co-stars Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters, Taylor erased any lingering doubts that she had the dramatic chops to tackle difficult roles. A critical and commercial smash, nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture, "A Place in the Sun" should have brought Taylor choice dramatic assignments from MGM. By and large, however, the films she made over the next five years were mediocre at best. During this time, Taylor was generating more ink for her marriages - first, to hotel magnate Nicky Hilton (who she later claimed physically abused her), followed closely by British actor Michael Wilding (who would father two of her three children) - than her performances in such middling star vehicles as "The Girl Who Had Everything" (1953) and "The Last Time I Saw in Paris" (1954).

Once again, George Stevens effectively came to Taylor's professional rescue with another juicy role: the female lead in his sweeping, big-budget adaptation of Edna Ferber's Texas family saga, "Giant" (1956), co-starring Rock Hudson and James Dean. To play Leslie Benedict, a headstrong yet compassionate Virginia belle married to wealthy Texas cattle rancher Jordan "Bick" Benedict (Hudson), Taylor had to age 30-odd years convincingly. That she was more believable as a radiant newlywed than a graying, dowdy grandmother did not diminish what was an excellent performance that held up beautifully.

Yet while her male co-stars both received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor - Dean, posthumously - Taylor's finely modulated performance in "Giant" was overlooked by the Motion Picture Academy. Despite the snub for her work in "Giant," Taylor received something more - a chance to form on location a lifelong close friendship with Hudson, who would become one of several of her closeted gay best friends, including Montgomery Clift and fellow child star, Roddy McDowall.

A year later, she would finally receive the first of her five Academy Award nominations for a film that The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther savaged as a "formless amoeba of a thing: " "Raintree County" (1957). Years in the making, MGM's expensive, Cinemascope adaptation of Ross Lockridge, Jr.'s Civil War-era novel cast Taylor as Susanna Drake, a mentally unstable New Orleans beauty married to an idealistic Midwesterner (Montgomery Clift) fighting for the Union. Laboriously directed by Edward Dmytryk, Taylor's histrionic performance was the only spark in this turgid, overblown film that was chiefly remembered for Clift's unfortunate appearance.

A near-fatal car accident during the film's production - which occurred after leaving Taylor's home in the Hollywood Hills - had left his formerly handsome face disfigured, so there was no consistency as to how he photographed throughout "Raintree County." Since the accident occurred not far from the Wilding home, not only did she race to Clift's side and keep him from choking to death by removing two of his teeth which had become lodged in his throat, she would nurse him back to health and provide as much nurturing as the tortured actor would allow. Due in no small part to personal demons and his inability to accept his disfigurement, Clift would become yet another imploder, self-destructive through drink and pills, who Taylor would attempt to help save.

Whereas "Raintree County" was best forgotten, Taylor's follow-up featured one of her very best performances. Unfortunately, as was becoming the norm in her life, career highlights came in tandem with personal tragedies. Having divorced Wilding in 1957 and that same year married husband No. 3 - film producer Mike Todd - Taylor was, for the first time in her married life, blissfully happy with a man completely in love with her. She had recently given birth to their daughter, Elizabeth "Liza" Todd, and was feeling a bit under the weather when Todd took a trip she had intended to accompany him on.

Unfortunately the showman's private plane, "The Lucky Liz" crashed near Grants, NM on March 22, 1958. Taylor was so grief-stricken, she had to be sedated upon hearing the news. Still mourning the loss of her larger-than-life showman husband, she nonetheless plunged into the role of Maggie in Richard Brooks' powerful adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Broadway smash, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958). The role fit Taylor's screen persona as tightly as the slip she wore in many scenes: Maggie is tempestuous yet tender; a vulnerable woman who refuses to be an emotional doormat. The scenes between Taylor and co-star Paul Newman crackled with sexual electricity. The film would bring Taylor her second Academy Award nomination. But at the same time she experienced this accolade, she found herself again making news for other, more salacious reasons.

While grieving the loss of Todd throughout 1958, Taylor had grown extremely close to his best friend, crooning sensation, Eddie Fisher. Unfortunately, any wife of a man within 10 feet of Taylor for more than an hour did not stand a chance. The wife in question just happened to be musical screen star, Debbie Reynolds. Together with Fisher, the couple had been coined "America's Sweethearts" for several years - even double-dating with Todd and Taylor on occasion. Unfortunately, Taylor and Fisher fell in love - or something akin to that; more than likely a shared grief instead - breaking up the "perfect marriage" of Fisher and Reynolds.

It did not bode well for either Fisher or Taylor that Reynolds was often photographed solo with her two children, Carrie and Todd, securing the sympathy vote as the wronged woman. For the first time in her life, Taylor experienced a radical shift in public opinion: from sympathy at the loss of Todd, to outright rancor and disgust for stealing another woman's husband. Indeed, the Fisher/Taylor/Reynolds dust-up ended up being the biggest Hollywood scandal of the 1950s. Taylor's career would eventually recover, but Fisher's fans would prove less forgiving - helping the crooner fuel a lifelong addiction to pills and booze.

Despite the tabloid buzz of a real-life "jezebel," Taylor would return to the Southern Gothic milieu of Tennessee Williams for her next film, "Suddenly, Last Summer" (1959), co-starring Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift. A lurid psychodrama based on Williams' one-act play Garden District, "Suddenly, Last Summer" was the third and final film starring Taylor and Clift, as he was then spiraling downward into alcoholism and drug addiction. Given the well-documented tensions on the set, where Taylor and Hepburn frequently quarreled with director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and producer Sam Spiegel, it was a wonder that "Suddenly, Last Summer" was ever completed, much less turned out to be a compelling film. As for Taylor, her intense performance as Catherine Holly, an emotionally traumatized young woman scheduled to be lobotomized, earned her a third Academy Award nomination.

Now married to Fisher, Taylor's part in the love triangle three years prior would be forgiven after she nearly died from pneumonia in 1961. Her fight to survive not only made for great copy, it also earned Taylor the Motion Picture Academy's "sympathy vote" for her role as a Manhattan call girl in "Butterfield 8" (1960). Taylor herself had no illusions about why she won the 1960 Best Actress Oscar for her solid but unremarkable performance in a film she loathed. Everyone else seemed to know the down-low too. Fellow nominee Shirley MacLaine (for "The Apartment") reportedly exclaimed, "I lost to a tracheotomy!" Oscar in hand, Taylor returned to work with a lucrative vengeance: for playing the title role in Fox's mega-budgeted "Cleopatra" (1963), she became the first actor to receive a $1 million fee.

Initially greenlit as a $2 million epic, shot in London by veteran Rouben Mamoulian, "Cleopatra" was dogged by costly delays from the start. Mamoulian exited the film, as did Taylor's original co-stars Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd; they were replaced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, respectively. Playing Marc Antony to Taylor's Queen of the Nile, the Welsh coal miner's son with the sonorous voice and handsomely ravaged face embarked on a steamy affair with Taylor - often blatantly in front of photographers on vacation. Looking the chump and perhaps experiencing a bit of karma, Fisher could only sit back while his wife continued to cozy up to Burton.

Meanwhile, the budget for "Cleopatra" kept soaring as the production dragged on in Rome. When Mankiewicz finally screened his reported six-hour cut of the film for Fox executives, the budget for "Cleopatra" had topped $44 million (approximately $300 million, adjusted for inflation). As for Taylor, she ultimately pocketed a cool $7 million paycheck for "Cleopatra," as well as husband No. 5, once she and Burton divorced their respective spouses.

The tepidly received "Cleopatra" was the first of nine feature films starring the couple soon known around the world as simply, "Liz and Dick." Most of their films were negligible, if not downright terrible, like the treacly romantic drama "The Sandpiper" (1965) or "Boom!" (1968), a botched adaptation of Tennessee Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. It seemed that Taylor and Burton were too busy living a life of glittery, drunken excess to focus on their film careers. They would marry not once, but twice - first in 1964; then in 1975.

All told, only two of their films withstood critical scrutiny: Franco Zefferelli's opulent adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966). It was veteran screenwriter Ernest Lehman's brainstorm to cast Taylor and Burton as Martha and George in the latter, the embattled couple playing alcohol-fueled head games with a young professor and his mousy wife, in Mike Nichols' film version of Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama. Rumor had it that this would not be much of a stretch for Burton and Taylor, a volatile couple whose boozy, top-volume arguments were already the stuff of tabloid legend.

That said, it was difficult to envision the beautiful 34-year-old Taylor as the foul-mouthed, middle-aged Martha, a part character actress Uta Hagen had played to unanimous acclaim on Broadway. Studio boss Jack Warner had reportedly wanted to cast either Bette Davis or Patricia Neal in the role, rather than Taylor. Whatever reservations critics had about Taylor's casting evaporated, once she appeared onscreen, 25 pounds heavier and wearing a salt-and-pepper wig. Taylor deservedly won her second Best Actress Academy Award for Nichols' film, which received 13 nominations, including Best Picture, Director, and Actor for Burton, who lost to Paul Scofield for "A Man for All Seasons" (1966).

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" marked the artistic peak of Taylor's film career. She continued making films, most notably "The Taming of the Shrew" and John Huston's haunting "Reflections of a Golden Eye" (1967), opposite Marlon Brando. Otherwise, her big screen vehicles over the last 40 years proved uniformly disappointing: "The Only Game in Town" (1970), "The Blue Bird" (1976), and "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980), to name

Credits

Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar

Actor
Show
2024

The Frost Tapes

Guest
Show
2022

Cleópatra

Actor
Show
2017

Operette sich wer kann

Actor
Désirée Armfeldt
Show
2014

Cine Clásico

Actor
Show
2013

Ninjas vs. Vampires

Actor
Lorna
Movie
2010

A Letter to True

Self
Movie
2004

These Old Broads

Actor
Beryl Mason
Movie
2001

Elizabeth Taylor: England's Other Elizabeth

Self
Show
2000

God, the Devil and Bob

Guest Voice
Show
2000

Unauthorized Biographies: Elizabeth Taylor

Actor
Show
1998

High Society

Guest Star
Show
1995

Can't Hurry Love

Guest Star
Show
1995

The FlintstonesStream

Actor
Pearl Slaghoople
Movie
1994
23%

The NannyStream

Guest Star
Series
1993

The SimpsonsStream

Guest Voice
Maggie Simpson
Series
1989
85%

Sweet Bird of Youth

Actor
Alexandra Del Lago
Movie
1989

Murphy Brown

Guest Star
Series
1988

Young Toscanini

Actor
Nadina Bulicioff
Movie
1988

Poker Alice

Actor
Alice Moffit
Movie
1987

There Must Be a Pony

Actor
Marguerite Sydney
Movie
1986

North and SouthStream

Actor
Madam Conti
Miniseries
1985

Malice in Wonderland

Actor
Louella Parsons
Movie
1985

Hotel

Guest Star
Soap
1983

Between Friends

Actor
Deborah Shapiro
Movie
1983

Genocide

Narrator
Movie
1981

The Mirror Crack'd

Actor
Marina Rudd
Movie
1980

CBS News Sunday MorningStream

Guest
News
1979

Winter KillsStream

Actor
Lola Comante
Movie
1979
92%

Return Engagement

Actor
Dr. Emily Loomis
Movie
1978

A Little Night Music

Actor
Desiree Armfeldt
Movie
1977

Victory at Entebbe

Actor
Edra Vilnofsky
Movie
1976

The Blue Bird

Actor
Queen of Light/Mother/Witch/Maternal Love
Movie
1976

The Driver's Seat

Actor
Lise
Movie
1974

Night WatchStream

Actor
Ellen Wheeler
Movie
1973
44%

Ash Wednesday

Actor
Barbara Sawyer
Movie
1973

Divorce Hers

Actor
Jane Reynolds
Movie
1972

Divorce His

Actor
Jane Reynolds
Movie
1972

Divorce His, Divorce Hers

Actor
Jane Reynolds
Movie
1972

Hammersmith Is Out

Actor
Jimmie Jean Jackson
Movie
1972

X, Y & Zee

Actor
Zee Blakeley
Movie
1972

Une belle tigresse

Actor
Movie
1971

Under Milk Wood

Actor
Rosie Probert
Movie
1971

The Only Game in Town

Actor
Fran Walker
Movie
1970

Here's LucyStream

Guest Star
Series
1968

Boom!

Actor
Flora `'Sissy'` Goforth
Movie
1968

Secret Ceremony

Actor
Leonora
Movie
1968

Los Comediantes

Actor
Movie
1967

The Comedians

Actor
Martha Pineda
Movie
1967

The Taming of the ShrewStream

Actor
Katharina
Movie
1967
83%

The Taming of the ShrewStream

Producer
Movie
1967
83%

The Comedians In Africa

Self
Movie
1967

Reflections in a Golden EyeStream

Actor
Leonora Penderton
Movie
1967
55%

Doctor Faustus

Actor
Helen
Movie
1967

Ko se boji Virginie Woolf?

Actor
Movie
1966

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?Stream

Actor
Martha
Movie
1966
96%

The Big Sur

Self
Show
1965

The SandpiperStream

Actor
Laura Reynolds
Movie
1965
21%

Ciklus Elizabeth Taylor: Ljubav na pijesku

Actor
Movie
1965

CleopatraStream

Actor
Cleopatra
Movie
1963

The V.I.P.sStream

Actor
Frances Andros
Movie
1963
0%

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny CarsonStream

Guest
Talk
1962

Butterfield 8Stream

Actor
Gloria Wandrous
Movie
1960
47%

Suddenly, Last SummerStream

Actor
Catherine Holly
Movie
1959
68%

Cat on a Hot Tin RoofStream

Actor
Maggie Pollitt
Movie
1958
97%

Raintree County

Actor
Susanna Drake
Movie
1957
10%

GiantStream

Actor
Leslie Lynnton Benedict
Movie
1956
88%

Elephant Walk

Actor
Ruth Wiley
Movie
1954

The Last Time I Saw ParisStream

Actor
Helen Ellswirth
Movie
1954
70%

Beau BrummellStream

Actor
Lady Patricia
Movie
1954

Rhapsody

Actor
Louise Durant
Movie
1954

The Girl Who Had Everything

Actor
Jean Latimer
Movie
1953

Love Is Better Than Ever

Actor
Anastacia "Stacie" Macaboy
Movie
1952

IvanhoeStream

Actor
Rebecca
Movie
1952
79%

Father’s Little DividendStream

Actor
Kay 'Kitten' Dunstan
Movie
1951
100%

A Place in the SunStream

Actor
Angela Vickers
Movie
1951
81%

What's My Line?Stream

Guest
Game Show
1950

Father of the BrideStream

Actor
Katherine "Kay" Banks
Movie
1950
90%

The Big Hangover

Actor
Mary Belney
Movie
1950

Little WomenStream

Actor
Amy
Movie
1949
75%

Conspirator

Actor
Melinda Greyton
Movie
1949

Así Son las Mujeres

Actor
Movie
1948

Julia Misbehaves

Actor
Susan Packett
Movie
1948

A Date With JudyStream

Actor
Carol Pringle
Movie
1948
57%

Feliz Amanecer

Actor
Movie
1947

Life With FatherStream

Actor
Mary Skinner
Movie
1947
92%

Cynthia

Actor
Cynthia Bishop
Movie
1947

Courage of LassieStream

Actor
Kathie Eleanor Merrick
Movie
1946

Le Grand National

Actor
Movie
1945

Jane EyreStream

Actor
Helen Burns (uncredited)
Movie
1944
100%

National VelvetStream

Actor
Velvet Brown
Movie
1944
97%

The White Cliffs of Dover

Actor
Young Betsy Kenney
Movie
1944

Lassie Come HomeStream

Actor
Priscilla
Movie
1943
94%

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