http://www.telegraph.co.uk
photo by Courtesy Everett Collection/
A glittering Hollywood era - which spanned seven decades, five Oscar nominations and eight marriages - ended yesterday with the death of Dame Elizabeth Taylor at the age of 79.
Catapulted to fame at the age of just 12 when she starred in the film National Velvet, Taylor went on to make as many headlines for her personal life as for her acting.
Her tempestuous on-and-off relationship with the actor Richard Burton saw the couple married twice, and Taylor also battled alcoholism, scoliosis and a brain tumour.
Stars including Michael Caine, Joan Collins and Angela Lansbury paid tribute yesterday to her career, which saw her win the Best Actress Oscar twice, and to her charity work.
Taylor’s friend Sir Elton John, with whom she raised millions for Aids research, said: “We have just lost a Hollywood giant. More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being.”
She died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, surrounded by her four children, after being hospitalised six weeks ago with congestive heart failure, according to a statement from her publicist.
Her son Michael Wilding said: “My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love. Though her loss is devastating to those of us who held her so close and so dear, we will always be inspired by her enduring contribution to our world.”
Taylor had been plagued by health problems for many years, and had for some time arrived at her public appearances in a wheelchair.
Her frailty in later years stood in stark contrast to her earlier beauty, which sparked a personal life that set a Hollywood standard for glamour and tumult.
After the death of her third husband, film producer Mike Todd, in 1958, she found herself in a well-chronicled love triangle with singer Eddie Fisher and his wife actress Debbie Reynolds, before marrying Fisher.
At the time she famously said: “I’m not taking anything away from Debbie, because she never really had it.”
While filming the lavishly produced Cleopatra in 1961, she started a torrid, tabloid-chronicled affair with Richard Burton, who played Mark Antony and who was also married at the time.
He wrote of the first time he saw her: “She was so extraordinarily beautiful that I nearly laughed out loud. She... [was] famine, fire, destruction and plague... the only true begetter. Her breasts were apocalyptic, they would topple empires before they withered... her body was a miracle of construction... She was unquestionably gorgeous. She was lavish. She was a dark, unyielding largesse. She was, in short, too bloody much...”
They wed in 1964 after she divorced Fisher, and Burton bestowed furs and diamonds, including a $1 million pear-shaped diamond, on Taylor.
But they also hurled invective at one another and were brilliantly cast in the movie of dramatist Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? about a bitter, verbally abusive couple.
Taylor’s role as a foul-mouthed alcoholic in that film won her the Best Actress Oscar in 1967, though reports of her confrontational marriage to Burton led many to believe that her performance was painfully true-to-life.
“We enjoy fighting,” Taylor once said. “Having an out-and-out, outrageous, ridiculous fight is one of the greatest exercises in marital togetherness.”
She later said of Burton: “‘Richard enriched my life in different ways, internal journeys into feelings and thoughts. He taught me poetry and literature, and introduced me to worlds of beauty. He made me laugh. He made me cry. He explored areas in me that I knew existed but which had never been touched. There was never a dull moment. I loved Richard through two marriages and until the day he died.”
The pair divorced in 1974 but remarried in 1975 - though their second marriage lasted just a year.
Taylor’s other marriages were to hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton in 1950, actor Michael Wilding in 1952, Republican politician John Warner in 1976 and construction worker Larry Fortensky - 20 years her junior - in 1991.
Taylor acted in her first film at the age of 10, three years after her American parents had returned to the United States from London, where she was born in Hampstead in 1932.
After just one film, she was hired by MGM, and became a child star with National Velvet, starring opposite Mickey Rooney.
photo by GettyImages.com/ - 1944
photo by Rex USA/
photo by Rex USA/
One of the longest-surviving stars of the old studio system, she was widely acclaimed for her roles Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Raintree Country and Cleopatra - as well as BUtterfield 8, for which she won her first Oscar in 1960.
She gained notoriety in later years for her friendship with the singer Michael Jackson, who asked her to be godmother to his two children.
In 2005, when Jackson was tried for (and found not guilty of) child abuse, Taylor staunchly stood by him. Jackson, who died in 2009, said of Taylor that “Elizabeth’s friendship is like the perfect jewels she owns — indestructible and eternal.”
Taylor was also famed for her self-deprecatory humour. In 1999, when asked what she would like to see engraved on her tombstone, she replied: “Here lies Elizabeth. She hated being called Liz. But she lived.”
photo by Rex USA
photo by WENN
She also mocked her own excesses, once saying: “My mother says I didn’t open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked.”
In a flood of tributes yesterday, Sir Michael Caine said: "So sad to hear about my beautiful friend Elizabeth Taylor. She was a great human being."
photo by Everett Collection
photo by Jim Smeal/WireImage.com - March 30, 1992
photo by John Barr/Liaison
Mike Nichols, who directed Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, said: "The shock of Elizabeth was not only her beauty. It was her generosity. Her giant laugh. Her vitality, whether tackling a complex scene on film or where we would all have dinner until dawn. She is singular and indelible on film and in our hearts."
On Twitter, the broadcaster Stephen Fry wrote: "RIP Dame Elizabeth Taylor, surely the last of a breed..."
photo by Barry Roberts/BEImages
Veteran actress Angela Lansbury said: "I am deeply saddened that Elizabeth has passed away and send my love and sympathy to her family. Elizabeth and I began our careers about the same time at MGM. Throughout her tumultuous life, she will be remembered for some unique and memorable work. And she will be ever remembered and appreciated for her forthright support of amfAR (the American Foundation for Aids Research)."
Share this to Facebook or any other networking site..........................
No comments:
Post a Comment