33 Iconic Photos Of Elizabeth Taylor, The Queen Of Hollywood
Public DomainActress, advocate, and Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor, circa 1955.Elizabeth Taylor captivated audiences worldwide with her onscreen presence, but to simply call her an actress would be an understatement. She was one of the most iconic figures of the 20th century.Taylor made her big screen debut at just 10 years old, and she continued to dominate American culture for the next 60 years as a performer, an advocate, and a beauty icon.Her story was far more than her career, however. Taylor was just as famous for her tumultuous personal life as she was for her silver screen roles. She was married eight times to seven different men, including her relationship with Richard Burton that infamously began as an affair on the set of Cleopatra. As she wrote in her memoir, Ive always admitted that Im ruled by my passions.Theres a reason that one of todays biggest stars, Taylor Swift, channeled Elizabeth Taylor on her latest album.Click here to view slideshowA Career That Rewrote Hollywood's RulesElizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born to American parents in London on Feb. 27, 1932. Her mother, a former actress, had given up performing after she married, but young Elizabeth soon followed in her footsteps. She started dancing at the age of three and wanted to be a ballerina when she grew up. But life had other plans for her."We had an idyllic life [in London] a house in the country, I had a pony, I went to the same ballet school where the little princesses went and it was all just perfect," Taylor reflected, speaking to Interview magazine in 2007. "And then Hitler started dropping those damn bombs and all of a sudden things were different."The outbreak of World War II forced the Taylors to return to the United States in 1939, where they settled in Los Angeles. There, a family friend suggested that Elizabeth take a screen test. It ultimately changed the course of her life forever.In 1942, at just 10 years old, she made her debut in There's One Born Every Minute, and her talent was already on full display. It was 1944's National Velvet, however, that truly cemented Elizabeth Taylor as a breakout star. The film became a massive hit, bringing in more than $4 million and skyrocketing the 12-year-old actress to fame.Of course, becoming so famous at such a young age came with its own set of problems. "She went to school on the lot, and was constantly around people much older than her," Nanette Burstein, who directed a documentary about Taylor, told Vogue in 2024. "So she did not have a childhood, yet was playing a mature woman on screen."Unlike other young actresses of her era, Taylor was able to seamlessly transition into adult roles. Her stunning beauty and violet eyes certainly helped, but it was her emotional depth and willingness to take risks that truly set her apart. Before she turned 20, she was holding her own opposite Spencer Tracy in Father of the Bride and delivering riveting performances in dramas like 1951's A Place in the Sun. The 1950s established Elizabeth Taylor as Hollywood royalty, with acclaimed performances in Giant alongside James Dean and adaptations of Tennessee Williams plays that showcased her range. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly, Last Summer earned her consecutive Academy Award nominations, with the latter bringing her a Golden Globe for Best Actress.The 1960s brought her even more success. She won her first Oscar in 1960 for her performance as a call girl in BUtterfield 8 even though she admitted that she hated the film. Public DomainElizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film Cleopatra.More significant, though, was her role in Cleopatra, for which Taylor negotiated the first million-dollar contract for a single movie role a remarkable feat considering the industry was not exactly kind to women at the time. Beyond that, though, the film was notoriously expensive, didn't break even at the box office, and is considered by many to have marked the end of Hollywood's Golden Age excess. That said, it also won four Oscars, and Taylor's contract was a revolutionary step forward in how stars approached negotiations.She won her second Oscar in 1966 for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which she transformed herself into an overweight, bitter wife opposite Richard Burton's alcoholic professor. Even today, the performance is considered one of the most powerful in cinema history raw, unflinching, and fearless. It was clear that Taylor wasn't content to coast on her beauty; she sought out complex, challenging roles that allowed her to demonstrate genuine artistry. Throughout all of this, though, movie audiences and news media were focused on more than just Elizabeth Taylor's roles. Her romantic life, frankly, might have been more dramatic than some of her films, and people watched it unfold like a soap opera on the world stage. Eight Marriages, One Great Love StoryElizabeth Taylor was married eight times to seven men, and that fact was not lost on the American public. Her relationships were heavily scrutinized, as was her seemingly insatiable appetite for romance. "I thought something would automatically happen to me inside," Taylor stated in Burstein's HBO documentary, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes. "I thought I would obtain maturity just because I was a Mrs. instead of a Miss. Of course, it has nothing to do with it."Her first marriage, at just 18 years old, was to hotel heir Nicky Hilton. It lasted less than a year. A second marriage to British actor Michael Wilding a year later produced two sons, Christopher and Michael Jr., before the relationship ended in 1957. Mere days after that divorce was finalized, she married Hollywood producer Mike Todd, with whom she experienced what friends described as her happiest period. The birth of their daughter, Elizabeth Frances, made it seem like nothing could end their idyllic romance. Then, tragedy struck. Todd was killed in a plane crash just after their first anniversary.In her grief, Taylor turned to Todd's best friend, entertainer Eddie Fisher, which led to one of Hollywood's most notorious scandals. Until then, Fisher had been married to Singin' in the Rain star Debbie Reynolds, but not even three hours after their divorce was finalized in 1959, he was married to Taylor. It's not surprising that the public began to view Taylor as a homewrecker. Library of CongressElizabeth Taylor with her three children in September 1957.Reynolds and Taylor eventually made amends, though, and the marriage to Fisher became an item on Taylor's list of regrets. "That was the only thing we had in common was Mike," she said. "I never loved him. I liked him. I felt sorry for him. And I liked talking with him about Mike... But I trapped myself in that." But even that dark period paled in comparison to her tempestuous love affair with Richard Burton.They met on the set of Cleopatra while they were both married to other people, and their chemistry was so intense that it resulted in a full-fledged affair. Burton, however, reportedly thought it would amount to nothing more than a fling. Per a 1998 article in Vanity Fair, he walked into the men's makeup trailer one day and proclaimed: "Gentlemen, I've just fed Elizabeth Taylor in the back of my Cadillac!"Of course, their relationship wound up being much more than a fling. They wed in 1964, divorced in 1974, remarried in 1975, and divorced again in 1976. It was a seemingly endless cycle of passion and destruction, made all the more difficult and confusing by the number of films they co-starred in. Burton was a notorious alcoholic, as well, which certainly did not help either of their reputations.He died much younger than she did, passing away at the age of 58 in 1984. Despite everything, though, Taylor later admitted, "I was still madly in love with him the day he died. I think he still loved me, too." Taylor's final marriages to U.S. Senator John Warner and construction worker Larry Fortensky were quieter affairs. But even while her romantic life was turbulent, her other relationships were far more stable and possibly even more impactful.Two of her closest friends were Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson, closeted gay actors who felt comfortable with Taylor, as Burstein explained, "because she had zero homophobia and had great empathy that they were living this double life." And from those bonds, Elizabeth Taylor was spurred on to activism. Elizabeth Taylor's Greatest Role: An ActivistWhen Rock Hudson died from AIDS in 1985, Taylor was particularly heartbroken. She had witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of the epidemic. At the time, the disease was largely being ignored or dismissed as an issue that only mattered to the queer community. "I kept seeing all these news reports on this new disease and kept asking myself why no one was doing anything," she once recalled, per CBS. "And then I realized that I was just like them. I wasn't doing anything to help." At a time when fear and ignorance paralyzed society, when even mentioning AIDS could end careers, Taylor leveraged her fame with fearless determination. She and a group of physicians helped to establish the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), and she later founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991, using her celebrity to shine light on a crisis that many wanted to ignore.The foundation raised hundreds of millions of dollars while providing direct care and moral support to vulnerable patients.John Mathew Smith/Wikimedia CommonsElizabeth Taylor at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony in 2002.Her advocacy work earned recognition that rivaled her Hollywood achievements. She received the French Legion of Honour, the Presidential Citizens Medal, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. In 2000, Queen Elizabeth II even named her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire."What it comes down to, ultimately, is love," Taylor said after accepting the GLAAD Vanguard Award that same year. "How can anything bad come out of love? The bad stuff comes out of mistrust, misunderstanding, and, God knows, from hate and from ignorance."But as she fought for greater awareness surrounding AIDS, her own health issues continued to plague her.Throughout her life, she broke her back at least five times, survived two severe bouts of pneumonia, underwent three hip replacements, and had surgery to remove a brain tumor. Eventually, those health issues caught up to her.On March 23, 2011, after being admitted to Cedars-Sinai Hospital for congestive heart failure, Elizabeth Taylor died at the age of 79. But her legacy did not die with her. As for what that legacy is, Taylor had told Barbara Walters in a 1999 interview what she wanted written on her tombstone:"'Here lies Liz. She lived.' No, I don't like 'Liz.' I hate that name. 'Here lies Elizabeth. She hated being called Liz. But she lived.'"After this look into the life of Elizabeth Taylor, read all about the original flapper, Clara Bow. Or, go inside the career of Mae West in 33 iconic photos.The post 33 Iconic Photos Of Elizabeth Taylor, The Queen Of Hollywood appeared first on All That's Interesting.
English
Arabic
French
Spanish
Deutsch
Turkish
Dutch
Italiano
Russian
Romaian
Portuguese (Brazil)
Greek