Born in London, raised in Hollywood, and famous from childhood, Elizabeth Taylor grew into a screen presence of rare intensity, and into a public figure whose later work for AIDS research became part of her legacy.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born on 27 February 1932 in London, to American parents, and the family returned to the United States shortly before the Second World War. She was signed by MGM as a child and won hearts in National Velvet (1944), in which she played Velvet Brown, a girl who trains a horse for the Grand National. The film made her a star before she was a teenager.
Her adult career was built on roles that demanded passion and defiance. In A Place in the Sun (1951) she was luminous as Angela Vickers; in Giant (1956) she held her own opposite Rock Hudson and James Dean; and in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) she played Maggie with a fierce, restless energy that earned her an Academy Award nomination. She won Best Actress for Butterfield 8 (1960) and again for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), in which, opposite Richard Burton, she gave a raw, unsparing performance as Martha.
Cleopatra (1963), in which she played the Egyptian queen opposite Burton as Mark Antony, became one of the most famous productions in Hollywood history, and their partnership, on and off screen, filled newspapers for years. The films that followed, including The Taming of the Shrew (1967), showed a star who still commanded the screen even as Hollywood changed around her.
In later life Taylor became widely known for her work on AIDS. She helped to found the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) in 1985, and later established the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991. She died on 23 March 2011 in Los Angeles. Remembered for violet eyes, eight marriages, a jewellery collection and, above all, a string of performances of uncommon fire, she remains Hollywood’s last great queen.
Image credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taylor,_Elizabeth_posed.jpg