As Martha, a middle-aged professor’s wife whose marriage is a battlefield of words, Taylor gave the performance of her life.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), from Edward Albee’s play, spends one long night with Martha and George, played by Richard Burton, as they host a younger couple and tear each other apart with wit, cruelty and, finally, terrible tenderness. Taylor, deliberately deglamorised, is fearless in the role.
She won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for Martha, and the film remains a landmark of screen acting.
Image credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.