ELIZABETH TAYLOR: How do you tell her life’s story?
ELIZABETH TAYLOR: How do you tell her life’s story? Icons of old Hollywood are rather popular for having scandalous love lives, living in sensuality, and having an obsession with jewels. We’re made to believe they lived a vain life. While that may not be entirely false, we humans are naturally creatures of depth, and as such, it would be a great wrong to sum up, the decades of a person’s life to what is shown for merely a few hours on the TV screen.
Their delicate childhood, their previous experience, and how that shaped them are not apparent to the public eye but are still, of course, relevant. So many actors and actresses of the 1900s, primarily celebrated by the public for their aesthetics and performance in film, are also gravely criticized. Elizabeth Taylor was not an exemption from this.
Who is Elizabeth Taylor? Early Years and Acting Career
Elizabeth Taylor, born on February 27th, 1932, in London, lived to be one of Hollywood’s most celebrated stars. She was born to American parents who had both been art dealers. Her mother, however, had been an actress before she had married, and at the young age of 3, Elizabeth started dancing and was then taken onto the Big Screen. She signed a contract with Universal studios and debuted in the movie One Born Every Minute at the age of 10. She played other movie roles in the coming years, such as Laddie Come Home in 1943 and The White Cliffs of Dover in 1944. However, 1944’s National Velvet set the 12-year-old actress up for stardom.
She was a more than versatile actress and was blessed with strikingly enchanting features. One such would be her violet eyes. Even before contact lenses existed, Elizabeth Taylor was known for her violet-colored eyes. And it was pretty apparent that she loved a wonderful eye moment. She took on more movie roles, such as Father of the Bride(1950), The Last Time I saw Paris, Rhapsody, and Elephant Walk.
Her love for others: Romantic and Philanthropic
The actress had an exciting love life. Her romance with Richard Burton is her most talked about a love affair. The two love birds had met on the set for Cleopatra while they had both been married to other people. Their love affair became a global phenomenon such that the Vatican became actively involved, openly chiding Elizabeth for “descending into erotic vagrancy.”
Elizabeth Taylor also suffered the loss of her dear friend Rock Hudson in 1985 due to HIV/AIDS and joined in the race to look for a cure. She supported and sponsored people living with the disease. Not long after, she launched the Elizabeth Taylor HIV/AIDS Foundation to assist those sick with the disease and fund more advanced research to find the cure.
In the first-ever authorized biography of the late actress by Kate Andersen, she was described as vulnerable, and a person who stood up for people who didn’t or couldn’t do so for themselves. The book gives a more detailed understanding of the reality of the actress and the woman behind the glitz and glamor of Hollywood.
Read more from I On the Scene: HERE.
