Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor

Foreshadowing the tabloid scrutiny of later stars, even her best screen performances were dwarfed by tales of her personal life. Magazines obsessed for decades with stories of her glamorous lifestyle, her health, her weight problems and most of all, her succession of high-profile marriages.

She played it for all it was worth, and it could only have helped her box office, but it diverted from more important facts. For starters, the woman could really act, as any viewing of her better films - Suddenly Last Summer (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), and The Taming of Shrew (1967) - would reveal. She received two Oscars, and was a dame of the British Empire.

But Taylor had several incarnations of movie stardom. The sweet child actor, appearing in wholesome films such as Lassie Come Home and National Velvet; the young beauty, playing the ingenue in Father of the Bride and Ivanhoe, followed by more substantial roles in Giant and A Place in the Sun; the respected actor, a major box office star of the 1950s and 60s; and later, the grand dame, winning new fans through her dedication to charitable causes well after her movie career was essentially over. After all this, it is sad that her most famous role might also be her most notorious: the flamboyant title role of Cleopatra (1963), the movie that seemed to symbolise her excessive, glamorous reputation.



For all her plaudits, it could be no surprise that her Hollywood break was due to looks, not acting prowess. Born in London, her parents were American art dealers. When she was seven, the family relocated to the US to escape World War II. Two years later, she won a screen test with Universal Pictures, who signed her for a small role in There's One Born Every Minute (1942). She was then contracted to MGM, Hollywood's largest film studio at the time, which gave her a more substantial role in Lassie Come Home (1943), thanks partly to her Englishness. It was her fifth film, the highly successful (and also frightfully British) National Velvet (1944), which finally brought stardom. In the role of Velvet Brown, the adorable but determined girl who dreams of winning the Grand National (and in true Hollywood style, does exactly that), she won hearts, showing her worth as an appealing (if somewhat saccharine) child star.

Like most child stars, growing up was a potential hazard. In the 1950 comedy Father of the Bride, she played a young woman whose impending marriage was obstructed by her protective father (Spencer Tracy). The movie's release coincided with her marriage (at age 18) to hotel heir Conrad Hilton Jr, and indeed the publicity of her real-live nuptials helped the movie's box office. Unlike her on-screen marriage (back for a sequel the next year), the Taylor-Hilton marriage was over within months (thanks to Hilton's philandering and abuse). Still, it began Taylor's well-promoted pastime of playing the bride. During the decade, she would marry four times. Apart from her marriage to producer Michael Todd, who died in a 1958 plane crash, all would end in divorce. Even as her private life made her a tabloid favourite, she was making the leap into the serious adult roles that had eluded many child stars.

It was not strictly hype or celebrity status that allowed this. Her beauty and undoubted sex appeal, with her famous bright violet eyes, gave her a definite star quality. As a bonus, she was maturing as a dramatic actor, improving with each film. For playing a southern belle in the Civil War drama Raintree Country (1957), which suggested that she might have made a good Scarlett O'Hara, she was nominated for an Oscar. No small feat, as the film itself was maligned by critics. To prove her staying power, she would go on to achieve the rare feat of four Oscar nominations in consecutive years.

Butterfield 8 (1960) finally won her an Oscar, with a role (as a society callgirl) that happily destroyed any remnants of the National Velvet image. Her portrayal was serviceable if not outstanding, but her win was more for sympathy than excellence. Two years before, she had been widowed at age 26, and she was still recovering from a near-fatal bout of pneumonia, arriving at the show from a London hospital. (Her victory was so certain that only one of her fellow nominees, Greer Garson, had bothered to attend.) Accepting her award, she thanked everyone gracefully, glided offstage and fainted.

Whatever the reason for the Oscar, it gave her extra legitimacy as an actor. After three years of recovery, her return to the screen was a special event on its own. The vehicle was Cleopatra (1963), which became infamous for its extravagance. Taylor was the first Hollywood actress to ask - and receive - a cool million dollars for one film, along with other luxuries. All of this helped to push the movie over the brink. Adjusted for inflation, it is still Hollywood's most expensive film, renowned as one of the great Hollywood flops. This is a cutting reputation - and inaccurate, as it turned a profit, and was actually America's biggest box office film of 1963. Taylor's salary, while seemingly exorbitant, was based on her acknowledged box office power.

Taylor won a reputation for avarice, which was not helped when she became something of a jewellery connoisseur. On the set of Cleopatra, she also met her future husband Richard Burton (cast as Mark Antony), a notorious ladies' man. Depending on whom you ask, they were either one of Hollywood's great love stories, or one of the most absurd. The British-born pair, who married in 1964 and became Hollywood's primary royal couple of their time, weathered 10 years of Burton's alcoholism and womanising, becoming Taylor's longest-lasting marriage. They even remarried (briefly) less than 18 months after their divorce.

Creatively, their joint output was variable. Most of their movies were showpieces of their relationship, as fans saw their private life (real or imagined) exposed in their characters. They struck gold with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Burton and Taylor's squabbles were publicly known, but they were nothing compared to the destructive marriage they portrayed in this film. Taylor played Martha, was a loud, vulgar alcoholic ("There isn't an abomination award you haven't won," snipes her husband), and audiences were startled to see that the glamour girl had been replaced by an ageing, acerbic woman. Taylor even gained 11kg for the role, which she considered "rather delightful".

This was an anti-Cleopatra film: a small drama with a cast of only four. (The cast was not increased from Edward Albee's original stage play.) Taylor won her second Oscar, and this time it was probably awarded on merit. After all, she was no longer seen as the tragic young star of Butterfield 8, but the grasping, egotistical star who had wasted so much money on Cleopatra. But however much the on-screen drama might have reflected their off-screen marriage, it left no doubt that Taylor was not just a movie idol. Decades before such transformation became normal for A-list stars, it took courage for a Hollywood superstar to take on such a role.

It was the apex of her career. After that film, she would never make a movie as famous as her private life. She would not lose all the weight that she had gained to play Martha, and as she followed her marriages to Burton with other short-lived marriages, she became known in the 1970s as a sad, bloated figure ("I was the great white whale," she said in hindsight), occasionally playing forgettable roles in forgettable movies, suffering from various drug addictions.

Happily, after she turned 50, some of the glamour returned - if not in movies (though she was marvellous as a catty film star in the 1980 film The Mirror Crack'd), then at least in her second coming as a philanthropist. She lost weight, and her public appearances showed considerable grace and charm. After her friend Rock Hudson, her co-star in Giant, died of AIDS in 1985, she used her celebrity to change attitudes to the disease, co-founding two charities that raised hundreds of millions for AIDS research. She even auctioned her diamond-and-emerald engagement ring from Burton, saying that her riches should be used "to make the world better".

She now only made the occasional movie. Perhaps most notably, and most unusually, she lent her voice to animated series like The Simpsons (even providing the voice of the Simpsons' baby daughter, Maggie, in one episode).

Like her acting career, her health and addiction problems would also resurface. On one of several stints at the Betty Ford Clinic, recovering from alcohol and drug addiction, she met another patient, labourer Larry Fortensky, 20 years her junior, whom she would marry in 1991. Taylor stayed married to Fortensky, her first husband who was not already some kind of celebrity, for five years. It was her final marriage.

Taylor is survived by three of her ex-husbands (singer Eddie Fisher, senator John Warner and Fortensky), along with three children and nine grandchildren.

To those not old enough to remember her films, she might be the classic celebrity, "famous for being famous". Still, the publicity was fuelled by more than just an exciting life. To explain the indefinable qualities that captivated generations of people you would need to watch her films.

She was the first modern Hollywood celebrity and the only one whose fascinating life made headlines for so long. Critics still argue over whether she was a great actor, but based on her iconic status, she might have been the greatest film star of them all.