Tempestuous but so talented: The extraordinary life of Elizabeth Taylor, the first $1m movie star

By Daily Mail Reporter


Elizabeth Taylor, the epitome of glamour and wealth, was the ultimate film star.

She married eight times - twice to the same man, Richard Burton - and was hailed as the most breathtakingly beautiful woman in the world.

Her life, always in the fast lane, was tempestuous and volcanic, strewn with tragedy and, in later years, dogged by ill-health. She fell in and out of love with astonishing regularity.

At the height of her powers, she was frequently involved in scandal, some of it self-inflicted. She was the darling of the tabloid press, which avidly pursued and recorded virtually her every move.

And towards her death she became reclusive, although not totally so. By then she was without a husband and, instead, lavished her love on her dogs.

Taylor was a screen legend - the first star to receive $1,000,000 for a film - with an irresistibly breathy voice and an unforgettable presence, who started out as a child actress and was playing adults while still in her teens.

It was the Welshman Richard Burton, by far her greatest love, who showered her with diamonds, furs, homes and even a luxury yacht, and who summed her up superbly: 'Elizabeth and I lived on the edge of an exciting volcano. I'm not easy to be married to or live with.

'I exploded violently about twice a year with Elizabeth. She would also explode. It was marvellous, but it could be murder.'

Taylor's tumultuous career spanned some half a century, and involved more than 60 films and TV shows.

With her lush black hair, her striking violet eyes, her heart-shaped face and dark eyelashes she was the unchallenged sex symbol of her generation.

Her death marks the end of an era: she was the last of the great screen goddesses.
Elizabeth Taylor was born in Hampstead, north London, but with US nationality, on February 27, 1932.

Her father was an art dealer and her mother a retired actress. The girl who was to become a child star before she was 10, had begun taking ballet lessons at the age of three.

Luminous: Elizabeth Taylor as a girl in 1934 (left) and already a child star in the film National Velvet in 1944


When Britain entered the Second World War, her parents decided to return to the United States to avoid hostilities, and settled in Los Angeles.

She appeared in her first picture at the age of nine, for Universal. But they let her contract drop, and she was signed up by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Her first movie with that studio was Lassie Come Home (1943), which brought her favourable attention.

After a couple more movies, she appeared in her first leading role, at the age of 12, playing Velvet Brown, a young girl who trains a horse to win the Grand National, in National Velvet (1944).

She starred with Mickey Rooney, and this film grossed more than 4,000,000 dollars at the box office. Taylor was signed on a long-term contract. It was the start of an incredible career.

The films she starred in, from 1942 right through until the next century, included Jane Eyre, Courage Of Lassie, Life With Father, A Date With Judy, Julia Misbehaves, Little Women, Quo Vadis?, A Place In The Sun, Ivanhoe, The Girl Who Had Everything, Rhapsody, Beau Brummell, The Last Time I Saw Paris, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, Cleopatra, Butterfield 8, The Sandpiper, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, The Taming Of The Shrew, Doctor Faustus, The Comedians, Anne Of The Thousand Days, Under Milk Wood, That's Entertainment!, A Little Night Music, Get Bruce, and These Old Broads.

Scorching: Taylor smouldered on screen including in the 1958 classic Cat On A Hot Tin Roof


After studying on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot, she received a diploma from University High School, Los Angeles in 1950, the year, at the age of 18, when the first of her eight marriages took place.

On May 6, that year, she married hotel heir Conrad Hilton Jr. The marriage ended in divorce less than two years later. Within 20 days, she married actor Michael Wilding. That marriage lasted nearly five years before ending in divorce in 1957. They had two sons.

Soon after that she married husband number three, film tycoon Michael Todd. They had a daughter before he was killed in a plane crash in New Mexico on March 23, 1958. The marriage had lasted 13 months.

It was the birth of that daughter, Liza, which left Taylor unconscious for four days and suffering from a near-death form of pneumonia. It meant she could have no more children.

Next she married crooner Eddie Fisher in May 1959. Fisher had ditched his wife, actress Debbie Reynolds, to marry Taylor. It was during her five-year marriage to Fisher that Taylor converted to Judaism, having been born into the Christian Science faith. At the time, she said: 'I have never been happier in my life. Our honeymoon will last 40 years.'

She and Fisher started adoption proceedings for a daughter (Maria Burton) whom Burton subsequently adopted.

By now she was not only an established film star but the most successful box-office draw in the world. The film industry simply could not get enough of her.

Screen legends: Taylor with Richard Burton on their first wedding day in 1964. He was to be her fifth and sixth husband


In 1963, she also became the highest paid star, when she accepted $1,000,000 to play the title role in the lavish production of Cleopatra for 20th Century Fox. It was during the filming of this movie that she worked for the first time with her future husband, Richard Burton who was playing Mark Antony.

The couple - both then married to other people - began an affair during the filming, a romantic entanglement which had tongues wagging around the world. Taylor ditched Fisher and 10 days later married Burton in 1964 in an imbroglio which Burton was later to describe as 'La Scandale'.

They travelled the world together and became the undisputed king and queen of international film-making throughout the 1960s. They were great stars, great lovers and, of most concern to the film-makers, great earners. Their estimated joint earnings were £100 million.

Burton extravagantly indulged her love of diamonds and spent fortunes on rings, necklaces and other jewellery. The most famous items were the 69-carat Idol's Eye diamond, made into a ring, and a £370,000 diamond and ruby necklace, once owned by Shah Jehan, builder of the Taj Mahal.

There followed the £100,000 diamond and pearl collar, the world's most expensive mink coat, at £52,000, plus homes in Mexico, Switzerland, Yugoslavia and Hollywood. She was simply showered with priceless gifts.

Much married: Taylor arrives at London Airport with her fourth husband, singer Eddie Fisher, and her sons Michael, six, and Christopher, four, children of her former marriage to Michael Wilding


She said: 'If Richard and I divorce, I swear I will never marry anyone again. I love him insanely.'

But there were bitter, violent rows. The marriage, which was both passionate and explosive, lasted 10 years, the longest of all her liaisons. They found life together impossible, and they divorced on June 26, 1974.

But the flame never died. Within 16 months, the couple were remarried at a ceremony in Botswana.

He presented her with a ring containing 72 diamonds, which was later sold to fund a hospital in the village in which they were married.
But that marriage lasted just nine months.

Speaking later about that divorce, in July 1976, Taylor said: 'We had a good marriage. Something went wrong, but we're still good friends. I know I did everything in my power to make the marriage work.

'It seemed that our kind of love was not conducive to carrying on a long affair. It turned into the kind of love that spells marriage.'

Longevity: Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Zee and Co in 1972 in which she played opposite Micahel Caine


When Burton died in 1984, she was inconsolable and said she wanted to be buried with him when she died. His widow, Sally, was not amused.

Taylor was then to marry silver-haired Republican politician John Warner, and although an avowed Democrat, she threw herself into campaigning for him.

She said then: 'What I want in love is the virile approach of the real man, willing arms that will hold me tightly to him and make me bend to him. I want to be loved with passion as if life itself depended on it.'

But that, too, ended in divorce four years later in 1982, after he won his place in the Senate and she felt redundant.

Meanwhile, her weight was ballooning, but nevertheless she enjoyed several friendships: with billionaire publisher Malcolm Forbes, who was gay, and actor George Hamilton.

Following that was possibly her most unusual marriage of all, to construction operator Larry Fortensky, in 1991. He was 20 years younger than her and they met in the Betty Ford Clinic where both were tackling alcoholism. His treatment was a condition of a drink-drive conviction.

Friendship: The actress had a very close relationship with the late Michael Jackson, seen here at Liza Minnelli's wedding


He had no social or showbusiness connections and utterly lacked sophistication. But Taylor was happy. She spent more than £100,000 on his wardrobe, looks and manners and they married in 1991.

'This time, with God's blessing, it's for keeps,' she said. But the vow 'Till death us do part' was omitted from the New Age marriage service, carried out at Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch.

But although they settled down to a pastiche of normal life, the aimlessness of their existence - he still returned to the building site - and their mental incompatibility, took its toll and they parted in divorce 1995.

About her marriages generally Taylor said: 'Most of the mistakes I made were in my 20s and teens. I was married when I was 18. I was brought up by a very moral and puritanical family and I just could not adjust to having affairs. It meant that when I thought I was in love with somebody it more or less led to the altar.'

Her life, however, was dogged with nearly 40 years of illness and 30 operations, with chronic abuse of drink and drugs. When she fell on the set of National Velvet, as a child she exacerbated a congenital back problem which was to dog her throughout her life.

During the 1980s, she demanded 1,000 prescriptions for drugs from strong heroin-like painkillers to appetite suppressants for her seesawing weight.

In the 1990s she had two hip replacements and a nine-week bout of pneumonia when her children were told she was dying.

The death from Aids in 1985 of her friend Rock Hudson set her on a crusade against the illness. She became the first celebrity in this campaign and stuck to her guns with tenacity, even though at first it was an unpopular campaign. This involved trips to London to promote the cause, in memory of Queen star Freddie Mercury in 1992.
Taylor also became a close friend to pop star Michael Jackson, whom she met in the mid-1980s. They shared the experience of early stardom, and there were suggestions that he modelled his increasingly bizarre facial appearance on her porcelain beauty.

It was Taylor who counselled him throughout the accusations of his child abuse, of which he was subsequently acquitted.

She was the glamorous survivor against the odds, saying: "Everything was handed to me. Looks, fame, wealth, honours, love.

'But I have paid for that luck with disasters, the deaths of so many good friends, terrible illnesses, destructive addictions, broken marriages. All things considered, I'm damned lucky to be alive.'

She became Dame Elizabeth Taylor in 2000, saying: 'I've always been a broad, now I'm a Dame...'

Other gongs included two Academy Awards for best actress. In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens' Medal in recognition of her commitment to philanthropy: the second-highest civilian honour in the United States, awarded to US citizens 'who have performed exemplary deeds or services' for their country or fellow citizens.

In November 2005, she received the Britannia Award for Artistic Excellence in International Entertainment. Her hand and foot prints are immortalised in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre and she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6336 Hollywood Boulevard.

In later years the star became an avid fan of the website Twitter, which the frail star used as a way of keeping in touch with fans.

In May 2009 she thanked them 'for all the love and support' following a spell in hospital.

Frail: Taylor attends the annual Macy's Passport benefit in Santa Monica in 2009. Her health had been poor for years


source:dailymail