Elizabeth Taylor

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Personal

Passions

Vocation

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Notable

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British-American actress, born in London to American parents residing in Britain. She learned ballet shortly after learning to walk and once performed before the Queen. In 1939 the Taylor family emigrated back to the Los Angeles area. Her father opened up an art gallery in the Beverly Hills Hotel and this is where Elizabeth was discovered by movie scouts. With a debut in 1942, she did a movie with Universal Studios and was then signed with MGM for a long-term contract that tied her up until the early '60s. Noted as a perfect beauty, with unique violet eyes, she matured directly from child characters into adult roles. She won her first Academy Award for "BUtterfield 8" and was nominated for multiple Oscar's. One of the highest paid performers, she won a second Academy Award for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" in 1966. Glamorous and popular as ever despite her bouts with alcohol, food and weight gains, Taylor remains one of the world's most photographed and publicized celebrities. As her film roles dwindled, she redirected her interests, coming out with her own line of perfumes and becoming active in the crusade against AIDS. She has personally raised millions of dollars for AIDS research. Even in her sixties, Taylor still commands attention with every performance. By 1990 she insisted she had not had any cosmetic surgery, "just a little work on the jaw." By 1997, she has gone through eight husbands, four children and nine grandchildren. At just 18, she married 23-year-old Nicky Hilton, heir to the hotel fortune, June 6 1950, and it was a disaster from the first. She later confided to friends that Hilton, a heavy gambler and boozer, did not consummate the marriage until the third night, and after that became sullen, angry, and abusive, physically and mentally. The marriage did not last a year. Next came divorced British actor Michael Wilding, 19 years Liz's senior, on 21 February 1952. Wilding was a quiet man who represented security, maturity. Perhaps too much so; they split after five years and two sons. A day after their separation, flamboyant producer Mike Todd leaped into Liz's life. She got pregnant with their daughter, Liza, and they married on 2 February 1957 in a orchid-covered villa in Acapulco, Mexico. Ironically, crooner Eddie Fisher, who became Liz's fourth husband, was their best man. After a tumultuous year of passionate fights and reconciliation's with Todd, he was killed in a plane crash on 23 March 1958. Eddie Fisher consoled Liz, then abruptly left his wife Debbie Reynolds to marry the widow on 12 May 1959. They adopted a daughter together, but their marriage crashed when she met and fell in love with her Cleopatra co-star Richard Burton. To all appearances, the most star-crossed and dynamic relationship of her life, she and Burton married - and divorced - twice. The first time was on 14 March 1964 in Montreal, Canada. They became the media darlings of their era with their jet-setting, battling, drinking and reconciliation's. They divorced in 1974 and remarried a year later, on 10 October 1975, Botswana, Africa, for a short rematch. Liz next married Virginia Senator John Warner on 4 December 1976. She gamely made a try at being a political wife but rapidly gained weight, drinking and pill-popping. After her divorce from Warner, Liz checked into the Betty Ford clinic, where she met 20-year-younger blue-collar worker Larry Fortensky. He became her eighth husband on 16 October 1991 in a gala held at her pal Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch. That marriage folded in 1996. Personally she has gone through tragedies in the death of one husband and a number of medical problems; two hip replacement surgeries, a near fatal bought of pneumonia, weight fluctuations, a lacerated esophagus, emergency eye surgery, irregular heartbeat, colitis, an ulcer) and a serious surgery to remove a benign tumor from her left frontal lobe of her brain 20 February 1997. A fall at home on 19 August 1999 hospitalized her with a compression fracture in her spine. She has suffered with osteoporosis for awhile and has never been able to shake the back problems that began in 1944 when she tumbled from a horse while filming "National Velvet." She married Larry Fortensky (born 17 January 1952) on 6 October 1991 at her pal Michael Jackson's ranch in Santa Inez Valley, CA. They announced their separation 30 August 1995. Taylor was awarded Dame commander of the Order of the British Empire at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, 16 May 2000. In June 2002 at age 70, she had radiation treatment for skin cancer and her doctor reports no residual evidence of basal cell carcinoma. Under the terms of the 1998 Holocaust Victims Redress Act, a Canadian lawyer filed a suit against Liz Taylor on 5 October 2004 for ownership of a valuable Van Gogh painting now owned by the star. The attorney, Andrew Orkin, claims the painting belonged to his great-grandmother, Margarete Mauthner, a Jewish intellectual, patron of the arts, and art collector who fled the Nazis in 1939 Germany. Mauthner died in 1947. Taylor reportedly acquired the painting in a 1963 London auction. In December 2004, the star revealed that she is suffering from congestive heart failure. She also has scoliosis. Six weeks after hospitalization, the actress/activist died of congestive heart failure on 23 March 2011 at 1:28 AM local time in Los Angeles, CA. (Time from her death certificate). Link to Wikipedia biography