Death of screen legend Elizabeth Taylor

HOLLYWOOD legend Dame Elizabeth Taylor, renowned as one of the world’s most glamorous stars, has died at the age of 79.

The actress, who lived her entire life in the spotlight, has suffered from ill health for many years and last month was treated for heart problems.

The star was renowned not only for her performances in movies such as Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but her personal life.

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She was married eight times - twice to the same man, Richard Burton - and had a lengthy battle with substance abuse,

The Oscar-winning star died this morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from congestive heart failure, according to her spokeswoman Sally Morrison.

She said the actress’s children were at her side.

Dame Elizabeth had been taken to the hospital with congestive heart failure six weeks ago.

A spokeswoman for the hospital said: “She passed away at 1.28 (LA time) this morning.”

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She found fame as a child but went on to appear in more than 50 films.

Dame Elizabeth was also noted for a lengthy and close friendship with the singer Michael Jackson who died in June 2009. He accompanied to a gala tribute evening at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2000.

Although her film work was long behind her she continued to remain in the public eye for her charitable work. She was a spokeswoman for humanitarian causes, most notably Aids research.

The British-born star moved to the US with her American parents when the Second World War broke out.

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She first found major movie fame with Lassie Come Home in 1943 and by the next year she had appeared in one of her most famous roles, as Velvet Brown in National Velvet.

Dame Elizabeth later became the first to receive one million dollars for a film role.

Her regular battles with ill health flared up in the early 1960s with her first near-fatal battle with pneumonia. Another followed in 1990, while a respiratory infection left her depleted in 1992.

Both hips were replaced within three years and she had a brain tumour removed in 1997.

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Her congestive heart failure was diagnosed in 2004 and she revealed she needed surgery on Twitter in 2009.

For many years her public appearances have seen her using a wheelchair.

Among those paying tribute today were film critic Barry Norman who said he had known her “very well” during her relationship with Richard Burton.

He said: “They were at that time perhaps the two most famous people in the world but she was an extremely nice woman and wore her great fame very lightly. She certainly did not swagger about.

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“She was actually not at all a bad actress. In films like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? she was extremely good.

“She won an Oscar for Butterfield 8 which actually wasn’t one of her best roles but she had been extremely ill beforehand so it was perhaps a sympathy vote.”

Her life, always in the fast lane, was tempestuous and volcanic, strewn with tragedy and, in later years, dogged by ill-health. She fell in and out of love with astonishing regularity.

At the height of her powers, she was frequently involved in scandal, some of it self-inflicted. She was the darling of the tabloid press, which avidly pursued and recorded virtually her every move.

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And towards her death she became reclusive, although not totally so. By then she was without a husband and, instead, lavished her love on her dogs.

Taylor was a screen legend - the first star to receive 1,000,000 dollars for a film - with an irresistibly breathy voice and an unforgettable presence, who started out as a child actress and was playing adults while still in her teens.

It was the Welshman Richard Burton, by far her greatest love, who showered her with diamonds, furs, homes and even a luxury yacht, and who summed her up superbly: “Elizabeth and I lived on the edge of an exciting volcano. I’m not easy to be married to or live with.

“I exploded violently about twice a year with Elizabeth. She would also explode. It was marvellous, but it could be murder.”

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Taylor’s tumultuous career spanned some half a century, and involved more than 60 films and TV shows.

With her lush black hair, her striking violet eyes, her heart-shaped face and dark eyelashes she was the unchallenged sex symbol of her generation.

Her death marks the end of an era: she was the last of the great screen goddesses.

Elizabeth Taylor was born in Hampstead, north London, but with US nationality, on February 27, 1932. Her father was an art dealer and her mother a retired actress. The girl who was to become a child star before she was 10, had begun taking ballet lessons at the age of three.

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When Britain entered the Second World War, her parents decided to return to the United States to avoid hostilities, and settled in Los Angeles.

She appeared in her first picture at the age of nine, for Universal. But they let her contract drop, and she was signed up by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Her first movie with that studio was Lassie Come Home (1943), which brought her favourable attention.

After a couple more movies, she appeared in her first leading role, at the age of 12, playing Velvet Brown, a young girl who trains a horse to win the Grand National, in National Velvet (1944).

She starred with Mickey Rooney, and this film grossed more than 4,000,000 dollars at the box office. Taylor was signed on a long-term contract. It was the start of an incredible career.

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The films she starred in, from 1942 right through until the next century, included Jane Eyre, Courage Of Lassie, Life With Father, A Date With Judy, Julia Misbehaves, Little Women, Quo Vadis?, A Place In The Sun, Ivanhoe, The Girl Who Had Everything, Rhapsody, Beau Brummell, The Last Time I Saw Paris, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, Cleopatra, Butterfield 8, The Sandpiper, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, The Taming Of The Shrew, Doctor Faustus, The Comedians, Anne Of The Thousand Days, Under Milk Wood, That’s Entertainment!, A Little Night Music, Get Bruce, and These Old Broads.

After studying on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot, she received a diploma from University High School, Los Angeles in 1950, the year, at the age of 18, when the first of her eight marriages took place.

On May 6, that year, she married hotel heir Conrad Hilton Jr. The marriage ended in divorce less than two years later. Within 20 days, she married actor Michael Wilding. That marriage lasted nearly five years before ending in divorce in 1957. They had two sons.

Soon after that she married husband number three, film tycoon Michael Todd. They had a daughter before he was killed in a plane crash in New Mexico on March 23, 1958. The marriage had lasted 13 months.

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It was the birth of that daughter, Liza, which left Taylor unconscious for four days and suffering from a near-death form of pneumonia. It meant she could have no more children.

Next she married crooner Eddie Fisher in May 1959. Fisher had ditched his wife, actress Debbie Reynolds, to marry Taylor. It was during her five-year marriage to Fisher that Taylor converted to Judaism, having been born into the Christian Science faith. At the time, she said: “I have never been happier in my life. Our honeymoon will last 40 years.”

She and Fisher started adoption proceedings for a daughter (Maria Burton) whom Burton subsequently adopted.

By now she was not only an established film star but the most successful box-office draw in the world. The film industry simply could not get enough of her.

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In 1963, she also became the highest paid star, when she accepted 1,000,000 dollars to play the title role in the lavish production of Cleopatra for 20th Century Fox. It was during the filming of this movie that she worked for the first time with her future husband, Richard Burton who was playing Mark Antony.

The couple - both then married to other people - began an affair during the filming, a romantic entanglement which had tongues wagging around the world. Taylor ditched Fisher and 10 days later married Burton in 1964 in an imbroglio which Burton was later to describe as “La Scandale”.

They travelled the world together and became the undisputed king and queen of international film-making throughout the 1960s. They were great stars, great lovers and, of most concern to the film-makers, great earners. Their estimated joint earnings were £100 million.

Burton extravagantly indulged her love of diamonds and spent fortunes on rings, necklaces and other jewellery. The most famous items were the 69-carat Idol’s Eye diamond, made into a ring, and a £370,000 diamond and ruby necklace, once owned by Shah Jehan, builder of the Taj Mahal.

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There followed the £100,000 diamond and pearl collar, the world’s most expensive mink coat, at £52,000, plus homes in Mexico, Switzerland, Yugoslavia and Hollywood. She was simply showered with priceless gifts.

She said: “If Richard and I divorce, I swear I will never marry anyone again. I love him insanely.”

But there were bitter, violent rows. The marriage, which was both passionate and explosive, lasted 10 years, the longest of all her liaisons. They found life together impossible, and they divorced on June 26, 1974.

But the flame never died. Within 16 months, the couple were remarried at a ceremony in Botswana. He presented her with a ring containing 72 diamonds, which was later sold to fund a hospital in the village in which they were married.

But that marriage lasted just nine months.

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Speaking later about that divorce, in July 1976, Taylor said: “We had a good marriage. Something went wrong, but we’re still good friends. I know I did everything in my power to make the marriage work.

“It seemed that our kind of love was not conducive to carrying on a long affair. It turned into the kind of love that spells marriage.”

When Burton died in 1984, she was inconsolable and said she wanted to be buried with him when she died. His widow, Sally, was not amused.

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