Image via WikipediaThe story of Elizabeth Taylor could also have been a novel that turned into a Hollywood screenplay. It had everything you could ever want. Stardom at an early age. The romances. The marriages. The scandals. The health problems. And all the triumphs and tragedies in-between.Except this was no novel. It all happened to Taylor, and now she's gone. She was 79.
Taylor started attracting attention at the age of 12 with her roles in "Lassie Come Home" and "National Velvet". Moving into adulthood, her roles in more than 50 films including "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "Giant" and "Suddenly Last Summer" eventually led to two Best Actor Oscars for "Butterfield 8" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
Offscreen, Taylor became much better known through extensive coverage of her love life. She was married eight times to seven different men, ranging from a business mogul to a U.S. Senator to a construction worker. Most of them ended in divorce. Third husband Michael Todd was killed in a plane crash.
Two of those marriages grew out of scandal. Taylor emerged victorious in a love triangle with Debbie Reynolds over her then-husband Eddie Fisher, then tossed him aside for Richard Burton. They met on the set of "Cleopatra" (a humongous flop that nearly sank a movie studio), then made their own history through two tempestuous marriages.
While Taylor's friendship with Michael Jackson raised eyebrows as well as made her relevant to the pop culture mainstream, it was the death of Rock Hudson (another close personal friend) that spurred her to do more important things in her later years. Taylor's work on AIDS-related organizations led to many honors, including a 1993 Oscar for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and a Presidential Citizens Medal from President Bill Clinton.
Whatever Elizabeth Taylor did with her life, whether it was in her relationships, her personas on the big screen, or in just selling her fragrance, you can't help but be amazed at how much we were privy to it. She may not have planned it that way, but that's how it turned out.
You just can't make this stuff up.
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