News

Child actor who became a Hollywood film star known for her dazzling beauty and her eight marriages

The film star Elizabeth Taylor, who has died of heart failure aged 79, was in the public eye from the age of 11 and remained there even decades after her last hit movie. She managed to keep people fascinated, by her incandescent beauty, her courage, her open-natured character, her self-deprecating humour, her eight marriages (two of them to the actor Richard Burton), her many brushes with death, her seesawing weight, her diamonds and her humanitarian causes, all of which often obscured the reason why she was famous in the first place – she had a tantalising screen presence, in films including A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956), Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Butterfield 8 (1961), Cleopatra (1963) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).

Taylor was born in Hampstead, north London, of American parents. Her mother, Sara, was...

A Hollywood legend has passed away. Actress Elizabeth Taylor, who made her fame with glamour roles in classic movies, charity work and failed romances, died today at the age of 79. She passed away at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of a congestive heart failure. Her publicist Sally Morrison said she was in the hospital for the past six weeks and was surrounded by her four children. “My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor and love,” said Michael Wilding, her son in a statement. “We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will forever in our hearts.” Taylor was a winner of two Academy Awards, including Best Actress for 1967’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and Best Actress for 1961’s “Butterfield 8.

Elizabeth Taylor, the iconic Hollywood star whose tumultuous romances and precarious health challenges often played out as larger-than-life Elizabethan dramas, died of congestive heart failure at Los Angeles's Cedars-Sinai Hospital. She may have been 79, but with more than 65 years of screen time preserved for all time, she will remain a glorious, glamorous and full-blooded image. Revered for her generous charity work but sometimes controversial for her turbulent personal life, the three-time Oscar honoree, fragrance and jewelry mogul and tenacious AIDS activist possessed many talents, including a remarkable gift for self-appraisal. Just before turning 60 in 1992, she summed herself up for Life magazine,...