Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Diva of Hollywood
Many scandals, even more men and countless films. Elizabeth Taylor was one of Hollywood’s last great divas. She would have turned 90 this Sunday. Review of the life of the screen goddess.
Elizabeth Taylor would have turned 90 this Sunday, February 27th. She is considered one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood: she won the Oscar for the best leading role twice, and received numerous other awards. But she also made headlines off the screen again and again, especially with her private life. She was married a total of eight times. Liz Taylor showed great humanitarian commitment throughout her life. She died of heart failure in Los Angeles in 2011 at the age of 79.
Her career in the film business began when she was a child. She rose to fame in 1943 at the age of eleven for her role in the film Lassie Come Home. It was the beginning of a career in Hollywood that spanned more than five decades.
After successful years as a child and teenage star, Liz Taylor made the leap into adulthood in the 1950s and was increasingly used as a leading actress. She soon showed her talent above all as a character actress of complex female characters. She acted in several Tennessee Williams films, including 1958’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”. The Southern drama catapulted her into the top ten highest-grossing movie stars and earned her her second Oscar nomination.
In addition to her artistic achievements, Elizabeth Taylor has repeatedly made headlines with her private life. She was married a total of eight times. The photo shows the actress with her third husband, film producer Mike Todd, and their two sons, Michael and Christopher, from her second marriage to British actor Michael Wilding. Todd died in an airplane accident in 1858 just a year after their marriage, and their relationship produced a daughter, Elizabeth “Liza” Frances, born in 1957.
Taylor was not single for long, a year after Todd’s death she married popular singer Eddie Fisher, a friend of her late husband. He was actually married to actress Debbie Reynolds and had two small children with her, including Carrie Fisher, who later became world famous as Princess Leia. But in 1959 he separated from Reynolds and married Liz Taylor. The marriage lasted five years, but then Fisher met the same fate as Debbie Reynolds: he was replaced.
But the couple withstood public pressure: the two married in 1964, just a week after Taylor’s divorce from Eddie Fisher. The marriage lasted ten years, but a year after the marriage ended, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton tied the knot a second time in 1975. This time, however, the relationship did not last a year.
Fueled by tabloid interest, Taylor and Burton became the movie couple of the ’60s. In the next few years, all the films in which both of them stood in front of the camera together became box office hits. In “Hotel International” both play a troubled couple in 1963. The excessive quarrels that both played in front of the camera are said to have fought in private life.
This film also resembles the real marriage of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: In “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” play an estranged couple whose long-held frustrations are unleashed under the influence of alcohol. Taylor got her second Oscar for best actress. However, the parallels between film and reality were greater than many realized: Taylor became an alcoholic through Burton, and in the 1980s she did two rehab sessions at the Betty Ford Center.
He was her last husband, but this relationship didn’t last either: From 1991 to 1995, Taylor was the wife of construction worker Larry Fortensky. She was previously married to Republican politician John Warner from 1976 to 1982.
Elizabeth Taylor had many good friends, so she was friends with actor Montgomery Clift, with whom she had filmed “A Place in the Sun” since 1951, until his death. In 1956, while filming the film “Giant”, the actress met Rock Hudson. Through her lifelong friendship with the star, who died of AIDS, Taylor became involved in the AIDS charity, for which she was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999. Liz Taylor was also friends with pop singer Michael Jackson for the last two and a half decades of her life. The film diva attended his funeral in a wheelchair in 2009. A good two years later, on March 23, 2011, she was buried in the same cemetery, Forest Lawn Memorial Park.
She is still one of Hollywood’s great film goddesses: Elizabeth Taylor would have been 90 this Sunday. She won the Oscar for the best leading role twice, in addition to which she received the Golden Globe, Baftas and countless other awards. But the artist, who was born in London in 1932, has repeatedly made headlines off the screen – with her escapades during filming and with her private life. She was married a total of eight times. In addition, she repeatedly made diva-like appearances.
On the other hand, Liz Taylor also showed great humanitarian commitment. Among other things, she collected money for AIDS education. Queen Elizabeth II knighted her in 1999. She died of heart failure in Los Angeles in 2011. She was 79 years old.