Elizabeth Taylor's celebrity was based at first on career achievements, the sparkling images she created onscreen. There was the 12-year-old heroine on horseback in "National Velvet" (1944); the improbably regal and mature teen who stole hearts in "Father of the Bride" (1950) and "A Place in the Sun" (1951); the fiery and untameable Southern wives in films like "Giant" (1956) and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958); the goddess of lavish Hollywood excess in "Cleopatra" (1963); and the glorious wreck of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966). There were dozens of others as well, all linked by that indomitable spirit and those flashing violet eyes.
But that glory period, during which she won two Best Actress Oscars, lasted just 22 years. In later decades, it was her spectacularly colorful personal life that kept her in the spotlight. There were the dramatic health scares (a near-deadly bout of pneumonia at age 28), the outspoken advocacy (she was one of Hollywood's first and most vocal AIDS activists as far back as 1985, after the disease claimed "Giant" costar Rock Hudson), the friendship with Michael Jackson, the jet-setting, the jewels (including the 33-carat Krupp Diamond, a gift from Richard Burton, there have been enough for her to write a book about), and of course, the eight marriages and seven husbands.
Perhaps Taylor's marriages didn't last because she refused to be any man's trophy or plaything, and because she was grander than all her grooms, save Burton. Their affair on the "Cleopatra" set rocked the world, and their torrid and tumultuous romance lasted through 14 years, 2 marriages, and a dozen movies together. In those films, their real-life passion was seared into each frame — and her offscreen and onscreen selves finally merged for a few moments of transcendent art. —Gary Susman
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