 | Elizabeth Taylor: Encyclopedia II - Elizabeth Taylor - Mature career and marriages
Elizabeth Taylor - Mature career and marriages
Elizabeth Taylor won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performances in Butterfield 8 (1960), which co-starred then husband Eddie Fisher, and again for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), which co-starred then-husband Richard Burton and the Supporting Actress Oscar-winner, Sandy Dennis.
Taylor was nominated for Raintree County (1957) opposite Montgomery Clift, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) opposite Paul Newman, and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) with Clift, Katharine Hepburn and Mercedes McCambridge.
In 1963, she became the highest paid movie star up until that time when she accepted $1,000,000 to play the title role in the lavish production of Cleopatra for 20th Century Fox. And it was during the filming of that movie that she worked for the first time with future husband Richard Burton, who played Mark Antony. Movie magazines, the forerunners of today's tabloids, had a field day when Taylor and Burton began an affair while filming the historical turkey; both stars were married to other people at the time. In a romantic entanglement that had tongues wagging on every continent, Taylor would trade in husband Eddie Fisher for Burton not long after Fisher had unceremoniously ditched wife Debbie Reynolds for Taylor. Years later, Burton would slyly refer to the whole mess as "la scandale". The episode cemented Taylor's reputation as a dark, hypnotic femme fatale (who was condemned by the Vatican), boosted Reynolds' career as a blonde, all-American sweetheart, and elevated Burton to the front ranks of film stars. Only Fisher did not profit from the cascade of free publicity.
She has been married eight times to seven husbands:
- Hotel heir Conrad Hilton, Jr (May 6, 1950 - January 29, 1951) (divorced)
- Michael Wilding (February 21, 1952 - January 26, 1957) (divorced)
- Producer Mike Todd (February 2, 1957 - March 22, 1958) (his death)
- Eddie Fisher (May 12, 1959 - March 6, 1964) (divorced)
- Richard Burton (March 15, 1964 - June 26, 1974) (divorced)
- Richard Burton (2nd marriage) (October 10, 1975 - July 29, 1976) (divorced)
- Senator John Warner (December 4, 1976 - November 7, 1982) (divorced)
- Teamster construction-equipment operator Larry Fortensky (October 6, 1991 - October 31, 1996) (divorced)
Taylor and Wilding had two sons, Michael Howard Wilding (born January 6, 1953), and Christopher Edward Wilding (born February 27, 1955). She and Todd had one daughter, Elizabeth Frances Todd, called "Liza," (born August 6, 1957). And in 1964, she and Fisher started adoption proceedings for a daughter, whom Burton later adopted, Maria Burton (born August 1, 1961). During her marriage to Fisher, Taylor converted to Judaism (having been born into the Christian Science faith). She remains Jewish to this day, having referred to herself as such several times.
She has also appeared a number of times on television, including the 1973 made-for-TV movie with then husband Richard Burton, titled Divorce His - Divorce Hers. In 1985, she played movie gossip columnist Louella Parsons in Malice in Wonderland opposite Jane Alexander, who played Hedda Hopper, and also appeared in the mini-series North and South. In 2001, she played an agent in These Old Broads. She has also appeared on a number of other TV shows, including the soap operas General Hospital and All My Children and the animated The Simpsons (as the voice of Maggie).
Taylor has also acted on the stage, making her Broadway and West End debuts in 1982 with a revival of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. She was then in a production of Noel Coward's Private Lives (1983), in which she starred with her former husband, Richard Burton.
After marrying Richard Burton, Taylor relinquished her American citizenship and is now a "permanent resident" of the U.S. After marrying Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia, she received a "green card" and keeps her British passport.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Mature career and marriages", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
