Her name was a byword for beauty, those smouldering violet eyes illuminating a host of Hollywood epics. Famous for her clothes, jewels and beauty, Taylor kept her fans intrigued with sass, sex appeal and talent since she was a teenage star and she often experienced more drama off screen than on. She was hailed as the most beautiful women of the century - and one of the most flamboyantly stylish as well.
She blew away the fashion world in a strapless Edith Head gown in "A Place in the Sun" (1951) and a tight slip in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958). Five years later, at 31, she injected new meaning into glamour in "Cleopatra," adding her own personal cosmetic look to create the Queen of the Nile with more than 60 costume changes and 30 wigs.
Through two Oscars, numerous romances and eight divorces, she was rarely out of the headlines, most recently with her campaign to raise funds for AIDS research. Liz Taylor's health had always been fragile and when she died on Wednesday (March 23) at the age of 79 - the world mourned the loss of one of Hollywood's all-time leading ladies.
An evacuee from north London, Liz Taylor's childhood ended in 1939, aged seven, when she went to Hollywood. At 11, the pretty actress was overjoyed when a cameraman scolded her for wearing too much make-up. In fact, she wasn't wearing any.
Taylor's sex appeal was clear when she walked on to the set of her 1945 film, National Velvet. In 1948, aged 16, she had a 35-inch bust, 34-inch hips and a tiny 22-inch waist. While Taylor said her blossoming was God's will, others put it down to the two 'farm breakfasts' and steaks she guzzled every day.
By the Sixties, Taylor's ill health was filling as many column inches as her love life. In 1963, during the making of Cleopatra, she nearly died and had to undergo an emergency tracheotomy.
That didn't stop her from making a play for her co-star, Richard Burton, who noted their first meeting in his diary:’ she was so extraordinarily beautiful that I nearly laughed out loud.
She was unquestionably gorgeous, she was lavish, and she was, in short, too bloody much. And not only that, she was ignoring me.'
In his diary he later wrote -: "She is beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography she is an ache in the stomach when I am away from her I'll love her until the day I die!"
Writer Truman Capote once waxed lyrical about Taylor: ‘Her legs are too short for the torso, the head too bulky for the figure. But the face is a prisoner's dream, a secretary's self-fantasy; shy, overly vulnerable, very human, with the flicker of suspicion constantly flaring behind the lilac eyes.'
Plagued with a spinal defect since birth, Taylor spent decades battling with back problems which played havoc with her weight. In 1979, she ballooned out mysteriously, checking into the Betty Ford Centre for drug and alcohol addiction in 1983. She returned five year later, having become reliant on painkillers.
Taylor's taste for expensive jewellery started early on. Her first husband, Nick Hilton, gave her a 4-carat diamond engagement ring, which cost $10,000. That was later upstaged by Richard Burton, who presented her with the Krupp diamond, worth $305,000. "I have, of course, always been fascinated with jewelry," Taylor said. "I think I was born not with a silver spoon in my mouth, but probably a pave-diamond spoon. The twinkle in my eyes, I'm sure, has been directly associated with stones of some kind."
The actress, who married eight times in total and became a confidant of late singer Michael Jackson, supporting him during his child molestation cases in the late 1990s and early 2000s, suffered a brain tumor in 1997 and would continue to battle a variety of ailments throughout the next decade and a half.As the news of her death broke this week, many celebrities expressed their sadness on social networking sites such as Twitter.
Singer Elton John, summed up the sentiments perfectly."We have just lost a Hollywood giant; more importantly, we have lost an incredible human being," he said in a statement. His words were echoed by comedienne Joan Rivers."Sad to hear of Elizabeth Taylor's death," she tweeted. "She was the 1st major celebrity to join me in the fight against AIDS when it wasn't a popular cause"
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“I’m a survivor – a living example of what people can go through and survive.” Liz Taylor.
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