Remembering Elizabeth Taylor
Mar 23, 2011, 9:51 AM | Updated: Mar 28, 2011, 3:51 pm
Elizabeth Taylor was the last of the leading ladies of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
In addition to her stunning looks, the key to her super-celebrity was that she was a bigger-than-life presence both on-screen and off.
And that should come as no surprise considering she grew up on screen. She was a star at the age of 12, thanks to National Velvet. And for the rest of her life, she was never out of the spotlight
As an adult, she won two Academy Awards.
In one of my favorite roles of hers, she plays the bickering wife of a beleaguered Richard Burton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and exclaims that she’s ‘wears the pants in the house because somebody’s got to.’
Of course, much of the fascination the public had with that movie was whether it provided a glimpse into the scandalous private life of Taylor and Burton – Hollywood’s most famous and glamorous couple. If Virginia Woolf was the best of their many films together and The Taming of the Shrew their most fun, they also made the biggest flop of the time, Cleopatra.
Her private life often overwhelmed her work as an actress. Her eight marriages scandalized the public, especially when she appeared to “steal” Eddie Fischer from America’s sweetheart, Debbie Reynolds.
With Taylor’s passing, I hope her off-screen life will now take a back seat to what she did on-screen.
