Elizabeth Taylor

Beautiful little Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born on February 27, 1932, in Hampstead, England, the second child of American parents who worked in London. Father and mother were Francis Taylor, an art dealer, and Sara Warmbrodt, a former actress.

Elizabeth was signed to a long-term contract with MGM after her success in National Velvet in 1944. The honeymoon between her and studio head Louis B. Mayer (pictured here) ended quickly. She came to think of him as a tyrant and disliked the studio’s control over her career, particularly her choice of roles.

Sara Taylor and her two children, Howard and Elizabeth, at home in California, where they moved from England in the wake of World War II. Elizabeth was always very close with her family—and they called her “Elizabeth.” She said in 1961, “People who know me well call me Elizabeth. I dislike Liz. I guess it goes back to the days when my brother Howard called me Lizzie, or Lizzie the Cow, or Lizard.” Sara tried to push both Howard and Elizabeth into show business. Howard wanted no part of it, but early on it was apparent that her lovely daughter was ideal for big screen close-ups.

Elizabeth was a graduate of MGM schooling in 1950, about the same time she got her first great adult roles, in A Place in the Sun and Father of the Bride. Just eighteen years old, she also became engaged to hotel heir Nicky Hilton that year.

Her wedding to Hilton took place (with the help of police escort) at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, May 6, 1950, amid a star-studded crowd of seven hundred. “Turn on the sirens. Let them know I’m coming!” she said on her way to the church.

Elizabeth matured fast. Fourteen films into her storied career she made A Place in the Sun. She won rave reviews for her performance, and attended the premiere with her best friend, actor Roddy McDowall, whom she met while making her first movie at MGM.

Elizabeth at her divorce proceedings from Hilton, following less than a year of marriage. She was devastated. Elizabeth was raised with the notion that when you loved someone you married, you didn’t have an affair. Her firm belief in this led to eight marriages and seven divorces, none of which she took lightly; “Every divorce is like a little death,” she said in 1996.

Elizabeth and British actor Michael Wilding were still engaged at the time this shot was taken in London. She met him during the making of Ivanhoe in England and they were wed on February 21, 1952.

Elizabeth’s marriage to Wilding was short-lived, but it provided her with her two sons, Michael and Christopher. Of the marriage Elizabeth said, “[We] had a lovely, easy life, very simple, very quiet. Two babies were born. We had friends. We didn’t do much.”

Film producer Mike Todd swept Elizabeth off her feet. They were married in Acapulco in 1957.

One legacy Todd left her was a start of her passion for jewelry. He regularly surprised her with expensive, gleaming gifts.

During her marriage to Todd, she was just starting to get roles in films that were important to her, such as Raintree County, and she blossomed under his larger-than-life personality. “I grew up for all America to see,” Elizabeth said, “and I ached to become a real woman.”

Elizabeth and Todd were blessed with a daughter, Liza, born August 6, 1957.

Elizabeth’s short but idyllic period with Todd ended with his death in a plane crash in March 1958. She attended the funeral in Chicago with her brother, Howard.

Todd and Elizabeth were good friends with actress Debbie Reynolds and her husband, singer Eddie Fisher. Elizabeth’s coupling with Fisher following Todd’s death erupted in the Liz-Eddie-Debbie Scandal. She was called a home wrecker in the press, irate citizens picketed Fisher’s shows in Las Vegas, and NBC opted to cancel his television show.

In the midst of her despair over Todd’s death, Elizabeth was making Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The movie turned out to be one of her greatest. Splashed on the covers of magazines, she was one of the most famous women in the world and would remain so for the next five decades.

Elizabeth and Fisher were married in Las Vegas in May 1959. The same year she converted from the Christian Science faith to Judaism, not for either of her Jewish husbands, Mike Todd or Fisher, as is often thought, but because, in her words, “I needed, after Mike’s death, some sort of very strong faith to keep me alive. Something to hang on to—and I didn’t find it in Christian Science. And I wanted to be close to Mike. So I studied Judaism for a year after his death and then converted.”

Elizabeth and Eddie Fisher, after her return from London, 1961.

Fisher saw her through a near-death bout with double pneumonia in England, where she was to film Cleopatra. When she returned to Los Angeles on the mend they attended a Cedars-Sinai Hospital charity dinner, where this shot of the couple was taken. The ordeal she had been through endeared Elizabeth to the public once again—and many, including Elizabeth, felt cinched her the Academy Award win as Best Actress for BUtterfield 8.

The only love affair in Hollywood more notorious than that between Elizabeth and Eddie Fisher was the one between Elizabeth and Richard Burton when it first began, during the making of Cleopatra in 1962. They fell in love on the set and could not hide it, so soon the entire world knew. “I try not to live a lie,” Elizabeth said, “I’m a human being, and I do make mistakes like all human beings. I can’t be that hypocritical to protect my public.” One of the great romances of the century was sealed with their marriage on March 15, 1964. They would later adopt a girl, Maria Burton.

Elizabeth and Burton were inseparable through all the years of their marriage. They made eleven films together, and when not working in tandem they were making appearances on the sets of each other’s films. Here she joins a conference between Burton and director John Huston on the set of their film, The Night of the Iguana.

A snapshot following Elizabeth and Burton’s benefit performance of poetry readings at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in June 1964.

As a presenter at the Academy Awards in 1970. Prominently displayed on her décolletage is the sixty-nine carat Taylor-Burton Diamond. Burton bought the necklace for $1.1 million, saying, “I wanted that diamond because it is incomparably lovely. And it should be on the loveliest woman in the world.”

The Burtons, the most famous couple in the world, appeared on Here’s Lucy in 1970 with the most famous comedienne in the world, Lucille Ball. The crux of the show’s story line was Elizabeth’s thirty-three carat Krupp Diamond, given to her by Burton.

On the cover of a magazine at the time of her seventeen-year-old son Michael’s marriage to his first wife, Beth Clutter, in 1970. Elizabeth maintained close relationships with all of her children throughout her life (as well as with several stepchildren and grandchildren).

Richard Burton and Elizabeth were divorced and then remarried in 1975. Their reunion in wedlock was officiated by Abrose Masalila of the Botswana civil court in Chobe National Game Park. She wore a dress that had been given to her by Burton’s beloved late brother, Ifor. Their second marriage lasted just a few months. They never seemed able to explain why their marriage did not work. Elizabeth once said, “Maybe we have loved each other too much. I never believed such a thing was possible.” Their relationship was undeniably passionate. Burton wrote in his diary in 1968: “I have been inordinately lucky all my life, but the greatest luck of all has been Elizabeth. She has turned me into a moral man but not a prig, she is a wildly exciting lover-mistress, she is shy and witty, she is nobody’s fool, she is a brilliant actress, she is beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography, she can be arrogant and willful, she is clement and loving. . . . she is an ache in the stomach when I am away from her, and she loves me! And I’ll love her till I die.”

Elizabeth’s seventh marriage was to Republican politician and about-to-be senator for the state of Virginia, John Warner, with whom she is pictured at center. Along with them are Michael Wilding, Jr., her daughter Liza, his daughter Mary, her grandchild Naomi Wilding, and daughter-in-law Jo Wilding.

John Warner successfully campaigned and was elected senator of the state of Virginia. Elizabeth was a devoted politician’s wife for a time, bringing her in contact with a new stratum of well-known names outside of Hollywood and the European jet set. Here in 1980, she meets then GOP presidential candidate Ronald Reagan and wife, Nancy, and Virginia governor John Dalton (second from left).

After decades of success on the screen, Elizabeth made a triumphant Broadway debut in The Little Foxes in 1981.

Playing tourist at the Great Wall of China with Mexican lawyer Victor Gonzalez Luna, to whom she became engaged in 1983. The romance ostensibly ended amid her despair following the death of Richard Burton in 1984.

Elizabeth’s boyfriend in 1988, George Hamilton.

Sara Taylor lived to be ninety-nine years old, well cared for all the while through the aid of Elizabeth. She attended a tribute to her daughter at Lincoln in 1988.

In addition to unqualified success in movies, theater, and humanitarian work, Elizabeth launched a line of best-selling fragrances, including Black Pearls, which debuted in 1996.

Elizabeth met her last husband, Larry Fortensky, during a stay at the Betty Ford Center in 1988 and married him in 1991.

An Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation benefit. The cause of fighting AIDS was one of the most important aspects of Elizabeth’s entire life.

Larry Fortensky was Elizabeth’s last husband. They divorced in 1996.

Elizabeth and one of her best friends, Michael Jackson.

As ever, decorated with an enviable adornment, the day she received the honor of being named Dame by Queen Elizabeth in 1999.

Elizabeth was awarded an Academy Fellowship from the British Academy in 1999.

In 2002, Elizabeth achieved the highest recognition in the United States given to a performer, the Kennedy Center Honors, given for a lifetime of contributions to American culture. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush pose with Elizabeth and her fellow honorees: James Earl Jones, Chita Rivera, Paul Simon, and James Levine.