Elizabeth Taylor
From gorgeous adolescent starlet to screen legend, Elizabeth Taylor was renowned for her piercing violet eyes, her beauty, her style and, of course, her sex appeal. She captivated audiences from the age of 12 when she starred in National Velvet and continued to push the boundaries throughout her Hollywood career. Elizabeth Taylor and diamonds were synonymous. She designed her own line of jewelry, had a flair for fashion and loved to show off her favorite accessory: a man. Let’s not forget, she married eight times.
Taylor was daring and sexy and not shy about it. In 1951, while out with her second husband, Michael Wilding, she wore a strapless gown. It was considered a bold fashion move at the time. It was also in ’51 that she starred in George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun opposite Montgomery Clift. Her role, as Stevens put it, was that of “the girl on the candy-box cover, the beautiful girl in the yellow Cadillac convertible that every American boy sometime or other thinks he can marry.”
In 1958, Taylor’s career sizzled with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She starred as Maggie, opposite Paul Newman and Burl Ives. The film was nominated for six Oscars, including best actress for Taylor, but the film was likely too controversial for Academy voters and it didn’t win any.
Soon after, Taylor took on the role as Gloria Wondrous a NYC model/call girl in the 1960 film Butterfield 8. She looked simply sexy as she turned a plain white slip into the new heights of seduction. That everyday wardrobe item suddenly looked like the most alluring getup. She also took home her first Oscar win and starred alongside her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher. Unfortunately for Fisher, he would soon be replaced.
Taylor, as the exotic empress in Cleopatra, was the opposite of simple. She had 65 costume changes, a record for a motion picture at the time and a nearly $200,000 wardrobe budget. The film captured a powerful love triangle between Cleopatra, Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison) and Marc Antony (Richard Burton). But, it was the affair off screen, in Italy, between Taylor and Burton that caused an international brouhaha. The paparazzi caught “Liz and Dick” on a yacht off Ischia. That resulted in the couple being condemned for erotic vagrancy by the Vatican. Both were married to other people. Once divorced, Burton became husband numbers five and six.
Taylor married twice more. She launched fragrance brands, including White Diamonds. As her acting career slowed and after friend actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS, she devoted her time to philanthropy. She co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). She also launched the Elizabeth Taylor HIV/AIDS Foundation. She died in 2011 but remains one of the most popular stars of classic Hollywood and one of the world’s great beauties.
