Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, born February 27, 1932, died 14 years ago this week on 23rd March, aged 79. She was much more than “the girl with the violet eyes”.
Elizabeth Taylor was one of the last stars to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. A child actor, she made the transition to adult movie roles easily, her extraordinary beauty easing her path. If her early movies are anything to go by she was pretty wooden at the start. She learned her acting craft on camera, movie by movie, becoming, by the time she was all grown up, a forbidable actor, and over the years taking on many difficult roles, from Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (with Paul Newman) to Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (with Richard Burton).
Along the way, she won Academy Awards for her performances in Butterfield 8 (1960) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and stared in 56 films between 1944 and 1994. Other awards included the French Legion of Honor and the DBE (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire).
Off-screen, Taylor’s personal life was the subject of constant media attention. Married eight times to seven men, she didn’t have much luck with men but she kept trying. She converted to Judaism, endured several serious illnesses, and assembled one of the most expensive private collections of jewellery in the world.
Later, she put her considerable energies into philanthropy. When her longtime friend Rock Hudson died of AIDs in 1985, she helped to establish the American Foundation for AIDS Research and remained committed to raising money and awareness of the disease for the rest of her life, travelling the world as spokeswoman for the organization.
After many years of ill health, Taylor died from congestive heart failure in 2011, She was 79. I was struck by this arresting quote, “MGM taught me how to be a star and I have never really known how to be anything else.”
Of her many films, I’ve chosen this one, The Last Time I Saw Paris, based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The cast was immaculate – Van Johnson, Walter Pigeon, Donna Reed, a young actor called Roger Moore in a minor role, and Taylor at the height of her career and beauty.
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, born February 27, 1932, died 14 years ago this week, aged 79. She was much more than “the girl with the violet eyes”.
The post Ruth Leon recommends.. Elizabeth Taylor – The Last Time I Saw Paris appeared first on Slippedisc.
