“What a life! A spectacular career, yes. Spectacular looks, of course. But it’s the ups and downs—the drama, including the husbands and the deaths and divorces and illnesses—that keep Elizabeth Taylor on top. She fascinates a global public.”
—Spanish director Pedro Almodovar
“Her own life was as ‘watchable’ as anything she ever played.” —Meryl Streep
“She and Marilyn were the most magnetic beauties of the 20th century—one light, one dark. If you study their photos, Monroe was usually smiling and Taylor usually wasn’t. But no wonder, with all she went through. Elizabeth Taylor was the ultimate survivor.”
—Matt Damon
“There’s a line in the Stephen Sondheim song ‘I’m Still Here’ about a ‘sloe-eyed vamp.’ It reminds me of Elizabeth Taylor.” —Mila Kunis
“Elizabeth Taylor has had the most dramatic life of any movie star. With the whole world watching every step and misstep.” —Carol Burnett, friend and costar (Between Friends)
“When the Vatican publicly denounced her for ‘erotic vagrancy,’ it did get to her. But Elizabeth kept her cool. She kept it in perspective and simply asked, ‘Can I sue the Pope?’” —Roddy McDowall, friend and costar (Cleopatra)
“From what I’ve read, Elizabeth Taylor was popular for a long time mainly for her looks. But she went so beyond that and did so much more with her life. For acting she received two Academy Awards, and later another Oscar for her AIDS and charity work.”
—Kate Beckinsale
“Of course Elizabeth had vanity. Otherwise she wouldn’t have looked—or presented—the way she did, which people enjoyed looking at. But she wasn’t narcissistic. Big difference.” —costume designer Nolan Miller
“Not since royalty and empires has one woman owned so many magnificent gems and diamonds. Most royals, like you see in old paintings, were ugly but wore beautiful jewelry—maybe that’s why. Elizabeth Taylor, you can see in hundreds of photos, looked gorgeous wearing beautiful jewelry.”
—Francesca Hilton, daughter of Zsa Zsa Gabor and hotelier Conrad Hilton
“It’s sad to think that since her passing, Elizabeth Taylor’s diamond collection has been scattered to the highest-bidder-at-auction winds.” —Julianne Moore
“I sometimes wear Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds [perfume]. Why not? Don’t tell me diamonds have a gender.” —actor-comedian Andy Dick
“One of my most favorite fragrances is [Elizabeth Taylor’s] Violet Eyes. Now you can also buy violet contact lenses!” —Charo, Spanish comedian-singer-guitarist
“The word ‘spectacular’ has the same root as spectator. It means to look. Elizabeth Taylor was typically a spectacle to behold. Or else she was making a spectacle of herself.”
—British actress Stephanie Beacham
“Her life became a continuing soap opera, but because it was real and so full of glamour, wealth, and romance, not to mention controversy, it was more interesting than any TV soap opera.” —publicist Dale Olson
“Fifty percent of all box-office income in 1966–67 was made from movies starring one or other or both Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.” —film distributor Harry Walders
“She was in the news constantly during her two marriages to Richard Burton. But she was hardly unpublicized before him. Or after him. Elizabeth attracted publicity like a magnet —Jane Fonda
“At least one of her marriages was publicity-oriented—to politico John Warner. She later said it had been a mistake . . . they differed so much. For all her ultra-feminine display, Elizabeth Taylor was very strong. Regardless, Warner banned any reference to the Equal Rights Amendment during his campaign, of which his wife was the centerpiece.”
—journalist Shana Alexander
“A woman like you could probably help get me elected senator.”
—John Warner’s pre-ET proposal to Barbara Walters, which she declined
“The Taylor-Warner relationship could be interpreted as pro-celebrity from both sides. He won his race with her help. And she, middle-aged and no longer a Hollywood lead, went east for a new spotlight and a temporary career as Mrs. Politician . . . and got fat in the process. Then she divorced, lost the fat, regained her looks, and started over again. People were agog.” —Entertainment Tonight writer Wayne Warga
“So the irony is that Senator John Warner, thanks to a pro-gay, somewhat pro-feminist celebrity, is in office for thirty years and gets to vote against gay rights and women’s rights. That is extremely ironic.”
—Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? playwright Edward Albee
“Liz Taylor is the most publicized movie star of them all. Marilyn would compete for the title, except she didn’t live long enough. The other contender is Garbo, but she avoided publicity and retired early, even though unwanted publicity continued to pursue her.”
—film historian Douglas Whitney
“Her timing was very lucky indeed. Had she been born ten years earlier, or even six like Marilyn Monroe, the Fisher-Reynolds scandal would have stopped Taylor’s career cold. Contrariwise, had Monroe been born six or ten years later and lived, she could have transitioned to a dramatic actress less dependent on her sex appeal.”
—Creative Artists Agency (CAA) agent Rick Marroquin
“In the 1950s and into the ’60s Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor were roundly criticized by the media and ‘morality’ groups. In different ways, for different reasons. Marilyn for being too sexy and turning the male public on too much. Liz for being too sexual and aggressive in turning specific men on too much, taking them away from their wives and kids. You can see in retrospect that Marilyn did nothing wrong. She was blameless. Liz Taylor did bust up some famous households.”
—Susan Strasberg, actress and daughter of Marilyn Monroe’s acting coach, Lee Strasberg
“She was one of the great beauties of history, and played some of the great beauties of history. She was criticized for both . . . I don’t think if Elizabeth Taylor had been a man she’d have gotten half the denunciations she did. It was a much more patriarchal time.”
—Angelina Jolie
“When a man’s terrific-looking he’s quietly or secretly put down. If he marries, the criticism dies down, like a Rock Hudson, and if he also has kids, like Tyrone Power, it tends to die out. But if a woman’s terrific-looking, like Marilyn or Liz or Ava [Gardner] and she doesn’t stay married to one man, she’s ‘wild’ and has to be contained and limited.” —actress Nedra Volz (The Dukes of Hazzard)
“Blondes connote comedy or romance. Brunettes connote drama or romance. . . . Blonde actresses seldom exert the same dramatic impact. Imagine a blonde playing Medea. They’re rather like butterflies—lovely to look at, but not much gravitas.”
—ET biographer Sheridan Morley
“It took myriad movies and some decades before Elizabeth Taylor developed a flair for comedy.”
—Mark Ricci, coauthor of The Films of Elizabeth Taylor
“If you analyze it, all sex symbols are loved and hated. Men lust after them. They also resent them—they’re intimidated. More so if the ‘girl’ is rich, famous, powerful. . . . If she smiles a lot and acts soft, like Marilyn Monroe, there’s less flak. If she doesn’t smile much and seems rather arrogant, like Liz Taylor, there’s more flak.”
—Australian author and feminist Germaine Greer
“The public tends to want female stars to be very attractive and very vulnerable. It’s the less vulnerable ones who are less liked, more quickly jumped on when they do something that’s perceived as wrong. Perfect example: Elizabeth Taylor.” —Natalie Wood
“Women without great looks are judged severely. ‘She’s a dog.’ Women with great looks are judged severely. ‘She’s a bitch.’” —Chen Sam, ET’s publicist
“I’ll tell you what it is: beautiful actresses are considered very lucky, maybe too lucky. They’re supposed to have things happen to them. Passive, you know? But Elizabeth Taylor, she made things happen. She was seldom passive.” —comedian Totie Fields
“Elizabeth Taylor had dual British-American citizenship but didn’t need a nationality. She was transnational. Her medium was movies and fame itself. Alone or no matter who she was with or what she looked like, what she was doing or wasn’t doing, she was always of interest. The public just had to watch her.” —Susan Sarandon
“She had an international impact. What Elizabeth Taylor did mattered. People watched and listened and waited to find out more. Nobody comes close to that nowadays. She was the last genuine VIP superstar.” —Alicia Silverstone
“She had more real-life cliffhangers than anyone. It seemed half the time she was in the hospital or on the verge of dying, and the other half she was in some tempestuous marriage or breaking up somebody else’s.”
—Francesca Hilton, whose half brother was ET’s first husband
“No question she was a naughty girl. Behaved very badly at times. Was sooner or later forgiven. She made life—and Hollywood—less dull.” —actor Ron Glass (Barney Miller)
“Elizabeth Taylor . . . I mean wow. Like . . . that was a real movie star.”
—Brad Pitt
“I think Elizabeth would be relieved that she’s now more remembered as a great star, a fine actress, and a stunning beauty than a homewrecker. For too long she was notorious for supposedly breaking up Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds’s family of four and for actually breaking up Sybil and Richard Burton’s family of four. But yesterday’s headlines become today’s historical footnotes.” —costar Rod Taylor (The V.I.P.s)
“She definitely had a dark side. What Elizabeth wanted, Elizabeth nearly always got. She was known at different times to use her looks, her stardom, her wealth, etc. That’s not to say she was a villain. She was at least as much a heroine and a victim as she was a victimizer.” —Kitty Kelley, author of Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star
“Making Cleopatra, after the Liz-and-Dick affair began, when it looked like he would go away with Liz and leave his wife Sybil, Sybil tried to commit suicide. Pills. . . . Ifor, Richard’s brother, was there to save Sybil. Then, when it looked like Richard would return to Sybil, Elizabeth tried to commit suicide, to get him to stay. . . . The studio covered it up, said she’d been rushed to the hospital for ‘food poisoning.’” —writer Arthur Bell
“Elizabeth Taylor showed Hollywood and the world that a brunette could be as or more beautiful than the blondes that Hollywood movies have been so obsessed with.”
—Constance Wu (Fresh Off the Boat)
“As a raven-haired brunette, I appreciated Elizabeth Taylor’s popularity. In the 1950s the studios were going hog-wild for blondes. We were an endangered species. Elizabeth kept ascending through the box-office ranks though actresses were becoming less and less bankable, compared to actors. Ultimately, she transcended categories of hair color and gender and became a singular phenomenon. I still like her.” —actress Ruth Roman
“When a third party comes along and a married couple divorces, the third person may unjustifiably be blamed for helping to end a marriage that was practically over anyway.”
—costar Diana Rigg (A Little Night Music)
“The truth about the Eddie Fisher–Debbie Reynolds marriage couldn’t be revealed in the 1950s. Eddie Fisher in later decades hinted at the situation. . . . He was more than ready to leave [Reynolds], and—as with any goody-two-shoes-image actress—Debbie wasn’t exactly a poor, sweet, innocent, surprised victim.” —Jack Kroll, Newsweek editor and writer
“It isn’t much spotlighted today, but two things that lost Liz Taylor and Marilyn a lot of sympathy back then was the same thing: each married a Jewish man and, to top it off, converted. And Liz had two Jewish husbands. . . . As times have changed, we’re not encouraged to mention how very widespread bigotry was, even though it was the anti-democracy McCarthy era.” —columnist Shirley Eder
“It’s so great that Elizabeth Taylor chose to become Jewish at a time when that was a very unpopular decision. The lady was fearless.” —Natalie Portman
“I had to give up my title as most beautiful Jewish girl in America when Elizabeth converted. Mind you, that didn’t upset me at all.” —Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America
“I know Miss Taylor had two Jewish husbands and she converted [to Judaism]. But I don’t agree with the Arab world’s boycott of her motion pictures. She is an artist and she should be above political considerations.” —Egyptian-born actor Omar Sharif
“She couldn’t go anywhere without a bodyguard, both for fear of assassination and for the crowds that began to engulf her whenever she was out in public.”
—Kirk Douglas
“It has to be tiresome when you can’t go outside and be an individual or one of the crowd. Being Elizabeth Taylor took its toll. Any time she stepped outside her house it was an Appearance, and anything she did was subject to public judgment, often harshly so.”
—Hume Cronyn (Cleopatra)
“You might be surprised how she looks without the eye makeup. Ladies can cover our hair, change our looks with or without a wig, whatever color. I remember a few times Elizabeth went out in the open and fooled most everybody. She enjoyed that.”
—actress and friend Jean Simmons
“When you can’t have any kind of a life in a public space that isn’t professionally motivated and pre-arranged, it tends to drive you inward. Your emotions become magnified and your indoors life is subject to stress and resentment. This is enough to drive a majority of ‘superstars’ to drink, or worse. . . . Elizabeth Taylor has survived it pretty well, considering.” —psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers
“There’s the well-known story of Elizabeth in Rome during the months and months of filming Cleopatra, yearning for some fresh air and anonymity. So one day she tells her secretary to accompany her, and they drive to a tiny village a few hundred miles away where there’s no cinema and few if any TV sets. No one recognizes Elizabeth Taylor. She’s free to walk around undisturbed and uninterrupted. No one gawks or whispers or asks for her autograph or smiles in shy embarrassment or acts like she’s a goddess descended to earth. That evening, when Dick Burton asks how her excursion went, she sighs. ‘Boring . . . awful . . . no one even recognized me.’”
—Carroll O’Connor (Cleopatra and TV’s All in the Family)
“Elizabeth Taylor is a beauty. Just not the most confident beauty. She feels naked without the mascara, eyeliner, and so on. It’s part and parcel of her Look. She’s said to feel somewhat plain without it.” —Kevin McCarthy, actor and close friend of Montgomery Clift
“I once asked if she’d consider modifying how she did her eyes and eyebrows. Nope. Without all that, she isn’t Liz Taylor. I thought it looked too raccoon. Especially when she was younger and then when she was older. In between, it didn’t look so bad.”
—makeup artist Way Bandy
“In person, most stars take you a few seconds to register that it’s really them. With her, you know in less than a second. No one else looks like her. Her appearance is so dramatic, and she does sort of take your breath away with what you see and who she is. Elizabeth Taylor has maximum in-person impact.”
—producer-director William Castle
“She’s so magnetic! When she’s on the screen you don’t look at anyone else—and it’s not so much her looks as it’s just her. I’d love to have worked with Elizabeth Taylor. Even if she played my mother or something.”
—John Travolta
“In the end it’s the work that survives. Older people remember the Liz Taylor scandals, but the rest of us, we have only the films . . . so many of them, including so many fascinating or classic ones. It’s a hell of a great legacy.” —Lucy Liu
“Yes, the scandals have made her even more popular at the box office. But she didn’t set out to engage in a single scandal, and most of them, if she had it to do over again, she would definitely have avoided.” —director George Stevens (A Place in the Sun, Giant)
“If the U.S. had royalty, is there any doubt Elizabeth would be our queen? She lives royally. She is known [in the 1960s] for her luggage and entourage, which on a recent trip numbered one-hundred-and-fifty-six suitcases, four children, one governess, three male secretaries, one hairdresser, one nurse, four dogs, a turtle, and two Siamese cats with diamond-studded collars.” —columnist Army Archerd
“What she’s never had to do is pick up after herself. The first time she ever had to hang her clothes in the closet or anything similar was her first visit to the Betty Ford Center when she was recovering from chemical addiction.” —friend and costar Rock Hudson (Giant)
“Elizabeth was a good friend, but you didn’t really want her for a houseguest. The mess she left behind was nothing compared to the mess her pampered little dogs left behind.”
—agent and producer Paul Kohner
“Was she alcoholic? During some periods, she was. But Taylor’s main substance abuse was through prescribed painkillers. The myriad of accidents and operations she endured . . . she broke her back twice. Without painkillers she’d have dissolved in a puddle of pain.” —philanthropist Sybil Brand, who lived to 104
“Alcohol killed Richard Burton, though the official cause was a brain hemorrhage. It did not kill Elizabeth Taylor, who could outdrink her fifth and sixth husband, who were both Richard.” —comedian Gary Morton, second husband of Lucille Ball
“It’s her desire to live that has pulled her through so many crises in her life. Who knows where that comes from? Maybe it’s from actually being at death’s door so many times and realizing how precious life is and not wanting to miss out on a second of it. Or it could be a positive outlook at her very core that pushes her onward. Or is it her mother, maybe?”
—ET’s hairdresser Jose Eber
“Elizabeth has had pneumonia more times than she can count. Operations on nearly every part of her body. She says she sometimes gets mad at her body because it keeps betraying her. And it doesn’t all stem from a horse-riding accident when young. She merely has dramatically bad health—and dramatically good stamina and recuperative powers.”
—Brenda Maddox, author of Who’s Afraid of Elizabeth Taylor?
“That Elizabeth Taylor survived to forty was remarkable. So many times she was expected to die. She even won one Academy Award primarily because she didn’t die. . . . Then she made it to fifty, sixty, seventy. She seemed indestructible. She didn’t make it to eighty, but talk about the Bionic Woman!” —Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman)
“Elizabeth Taylor’s physical decline was sad but slow. It’s rather incredible with all the abuse she heaped on herself that she remained beautiful as long as she did. Not to mention that after she got fat—visibly, factually fat—she lost it and came back as beautiful as ever. That woman could do anything—positive and negative.”
—author and professor Carolyn G. Heilbrun
“When Elizabeth made her comeback as a world-class beauty, it was through her weight loss, the flattering new black-and-white hairdo, and of course plastic surgery that cut away the excess skin after the fat was gone. She admitted to the first two.”
—UK playwright Anthony Shaffer
“Quite apart from being called ‘the most beautiful woman in the world,’ she just happens to be somebody to whom shocking or tragic things happen . . . a gilt-edged victim. People with humdrum lives like to live vicariously through her.” —novelist Jackie Collins
“Some stars with only a fourth of her fame have bigger egos. Elizabeth can be blunt, but she’s realistic and occasionally modest. She doesn’t believe she’s a beauty in the same category as, for instance, Ava Gardner.” —costar Lillian Gish (The Comedians)
“Elizabeth Taylor isn’t mad about her figure. But most men are.”
—costar Van Johnson (The Last Time I Saw Paris)
“The British admire themselves for being frank or outspoken. But a friend told me Elizabeth was quite hurt when Richard Burton publicly catalogued her physical flaws, even though he did it with humor. He thought he was being admirably candid but it did come across rather cruel. Wonder how he’d like it if Liz talked about his pockmarked face.”
—Evelyn Keyes, actress and an ex-wife of director John Huston (The Night of the Iguana)
“Barbra Streisand and Shirley MacLaine have beautiful hands . . . long fingers and purposefully long fingernails. If you even notice her hands, which I don’t think most people do, Elizabeth Taylor rarely paints her fingernails and has shortish fingers. Hands aren’t her best feature and she doesn’t draw attention to them. When Elizabeth wears a diamond ring she makes sure it’s big enough so you notice the ring more than her hand.”
—photographer Francesco Scavullo
“Like most female movie stars, Liz is shorter than you think, and her legs are short. . . . It’s a peculiar thing about many child stars, female and male, but they grow up, or don’t, to be on the short side. Think of Liz, Natalie Wood, Patty Duke, the Harry Potter boy [Daniel Radcliffe], and oh so many others.” —Jackie Cooper, former child star
“The grass is always greener. Elizabeth admires taller, long-waisted women. She herself doesn’t have much of a waist. Perhaps she’s lucky. As has often been said, a waist is a terrible thing to mind.”
—Lynn Redgrave
“In her [motion] pictures, Miss Taylor’s bust was not particularly or overly emphasized. Bear in mind that cleavage was for the most part censored. . . . It was in her public dress that she perpetuated a focus on her upper anatomy, with daring and very impressive cleavage. Sometimes with jewelry—a necklace or a pendant—which all but pointed down to the forbidden valley.”
—Jeffrey Lettow, entertainment editor of the Marin Independent Journal
“The only reason she attracted Mike Todd [Taylor’s third husband] was her big breasts, which are overly important to her career.” —rival beauty Marlene Dietrich
“Miss Taylor is a spoiled child and a public disgrace. The public will soon tire of her.”
—Joan Crawford in the 1950s
“Whatever else, Elizabeth Taylor had tact. She kept her criticisms private. She didn’t do the older-actress thing of publicly disparaging younger actresses. That happened a lot when Marilyn Monroe came along—so many established female stars took a crack at Marilyn.” —Jeanne Martin, ex-wife of Dean
“Elizabeth knew firsthand what it was like to be put down in public. Repeatedly. I don’t think she cared to visit that upon other people, unless they were truly abhorrent to her.”
—Roddy McDowall, friend and costar (Lassie, Come Home)
“The press was fairly openly anti-Jewish in those days, and when Elizabeth Taylor converted to Judaism for the man she loved [Eddie Fisher], she was more or less openly criticized everywhere but in Hollywood.” —talk show host Virginia Graham
“Elizabeth thought of converting during her marriage to Mike [Todd]. He resisted it. When she talked about it to me, I resisted it, knowing how much anti-Semitism there is out there. I didn’t want her to suffer. But she was determined, and her studies were something we did together. I hadn’t known as much about my religious or cultural background until I studied it with Elizabeth.” —fourth husband Eddie Fisher
“She was actually criticized for replacing Vivien Leigh in Elephant Walk. Leigh was having mental problems, so Liz was brought in as leading lady. Not her fault, but the Hollywood press didn’t want actresses to get swelled heads. . . . Any divorce that Liz experienced, including the first, from the no-good Hilton, she was often blamed for it!”
—Marni Nixon, singing voice–double for Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, and Natalie Wood
“I recently told a friend’s niece about the outcry when Elizabeth Taylor was paid a million dollars to star as Cleopatra. She couldn’t believe it. ‘So little?’ She’s also too young to remember when Barbara Walters was the first news anchor to be paid a million a year. Because that was more than any man was being paid, public indignation ran high. No news anchor is worth that much, many people said. What they meant was, no woman is worth that much. You have to look back and realize.” —actress Jean Byron (Dobie Gillis)
“It’s always noted that Liz Taylor got a mil for Cleopatra and was the first to do so. But she got substantially more than that, due to her contract’s clauses about all the over-time.”
—Julia Phillips, producer (The Sting)
“When Elizabeth Taylor was paid one million dollars for Cleopatra much of the public and part of Hollywood was outraged. No one had ever been paid that for one picture. It was considered obscenely greedy and a regrettable fluke. But within a few years Marlon Brando and Audrey Hepburn were also getting a million, and from there on things went up, or down, depending on your viewpoint.”
—two-time Oscar winner and Member of Parliament Glenda Jackson
“When you look back at the ads and posters announcing Cleopatra, it was so blatant—especially for that era—how prominently they zoomed in on, or center-staged, Elizabeth Taylor’s breasts and cleavage.” —Madeline Kahn (What’s Up, Doc?)
“I was forced to threaten lawsuit when pictorial advertising for Cleopatra omitted myself as Julius Caesar. . . . Rather than all three principals, only ‘Liz and Dick’ were pictured, thanks to their much bruited-about relationship. . . . Of course my image was restored . . . and jocularly referred to as ‘great Caesar’s ghost.’” —Rex Harrison
“When a movie is super-expensive and stars a major actress and isn’t a runaway hit, the media prefers to call it a non-hit or even a flop. Contrary to box-office figures. It happened with several Joan Crawford movies and with Cleopatra and Hello, Dolly! [starring Barbra Streisand]. Those movies were financial hits. But when a film’s budget is extremely high, it would have to be a Sound of Music–type earner to be considered a big hit.” —Harry Walders, film distributor
“A prominent factor in the cost overruns and delays on Cleopatra was Elizabeth Taylor’s poor health. Some was due to her mental condition, specifically, her volatile relationship with Richard Burton. She didn’t callously steal him from his wife. She did feel remorse and personal conflict. And he didn’t fall head over heels for Liz. He too was torn, but Richard was ambitious and aware that Elizabeth Taylor was his gateway from stardom to superstardom.”
—ET’s secretary Roger Wall
“What was never mentioned in the time of Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor, or hardly ever today, is that some actresses have a terrible, painful time with their periods. That can exacerbate existing health conditions, if any. . . . The on-set delays or absences which that caused were nobody’s fault. Despite that, the press frequently called these highly-paid women spoiled or ‘difficult.’” —journalist Shana Alexander
“It’s scandalous how much less Marilyn Monroe was paid per film than Taylor. At the time they were making concurrent movies, Marilyn was earning a tenth of what Elizabeth got . . . until Fox re-hired her after the famous firing and renegotiated her contract. . . . The moguls thought of blondes as even less respectable than brunette actresses, as bimbos instead of semi talents.”
—Sybil Brand, widow of Fox publicist Harry Brand
“A big reason Marilyn posed semi-nude in the swimming pool scene [in her uncompleted film Something’s Got to Give] was an attempt to knock Liz Taylor and Cleopatra off the magazine covers. The movie-magazine coverage was Liz, Liz, Liz or Liz and Dick, Liz and Dick. It worked. Marilyn Monroe al fresco in the nighttime pool made magazine covers worldwide. She was as beautiful as ever, but then tragedy had to strike and take her away several weeks later, at 36.” —Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe’s final costar
“How I would love to know what Elizabeth Taylor really felt when Marilyn Monroe died. A topic I don’t believe she ever spoke about publicly. And if she spoke about it privately, no one who heard has ever said.” —cable-TV talk show host Skip E. Lowe
“Elizabeth was jealous of Marilyn’s beauty—she felt she coasted on it. Marilyn was jealous of the meaty roles Elizabeth got and of her growing acclaim. . . . Each had a celebrated private life that wasn’t very private. They were, in essence, competing goddesses.”
—Paula Dell, stuntwoman and acrobat
“Marilyn was more jealous of Taylor’s career, while Taylor was more jealous of Marilyn herself. But at one point Elizabeth called her ‘that dyke.’ Norman Mailer put that in his book on Marilyn and Taylor was going to sue but backed off because apparently he had proof of the comment.” —writer E. Lynn Harris
“Most stars crave peace and calm in their private lives. There’s enough hubbub in their professional lives. But some are true drama queens, male or female. Friends of Liz Taylor say she bores easily and needs a drama a day. She loves to laugh and she loves to gossip and she loves to love.” —Hollywood business manager Morgan Maree
“With Elizabeth there was no such thing as normal life. The only thing predictable about our life was that it would be chaos. With Elizabeth, something was always happening, and if it wasn’t, she made it happen. If nothing was happening, she would start a fight. Every day was a surprise.” —Eddie Fisher
“Elizabeth has endured personal tragedies and scandals that would send half of Hollywood to their psychiatrists on a daily basis. It’s interesting that she’s one of few stars who has never visited a shrink.”
—ET’s publicist Chen Sam
“Some of the scandal sheets say my daughter has caused others to suffer. All I can say is she has a huge heart. She is very loving and she loves being in love. . . . Any suffering she ever caused, she herself has suffered that much more.”
—mother Sara Taylor (nee Warmbrodt)
“Most child stars don’t make it to adult stardom. Most that do are female, like Liz Taylor and Natalie Wood. Both of those had fierce stage mothers. Taylor’s mother was a failed actress and rather a desperate woman. Once, at least, she slept with a producer to get her daughter a good role.” —Gore Vidal, who cowrote ET’s movie Suddenly, Last Summer
“Sara was always socially ambitious, more so after she stopped being a moderately successful stage actress named Sara Sothern. She had very dark hair like Elizabeth but eventually went blonde so she wouldn’t detract from her daughter’s snow-white face and jet-black hair. For a long time, everywhere Elizabeth went, Sara went.”
—columnist Joyce Haber
“Elizabeth was very devoted to her mother, who lived to be very elderly [ninety-nine]. And she was absolutely devoted to her father.”
—Kate Burton, Richard’s actress daughter
“In 1946 there was a press item about Elizabeth Taylor’s parents separating. But Elizabeth’s potential was evident—she’d already done National Velvet. The mother fought to keep the marriage intact, at least outwardly so, for the sake of [ET’s] career. Rumors persisted that Sara had blackmailed Francis out of seeking a divorce.”
—columnist Sheilah Graham
“In England, Sara was always what is now called networking. Early on, she introduced her husband to a handsome 38-year-old bachelor politician named Victor Cazalet. It was love at first sight; the men became lovers, and Cazalet helped Sara’s family financially and in high society. As an art collector he was able to enhance Francis Taylor’s art gallery business.” —ET biographer David Bret
“During the filming of Father of the Bride, Francis Taylor had an affair with its director, Vicente Minnelli, the former husband of Judy Garland.” —ET’s secretary Roger Wall
“As an actress, Elizabeth took good care of her parents financially but her father retreated further into himself and the bottle, overwhelmed and perhaps trapped as he was by the domineering, enervating Sara and the skyrocketing Liz.”
—actor Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers)
“Francis Taylor had a serious stroke three years before his death. After he died Elizabeth felt very guilty over not having been closer to him during her busy adult years. . . . He lived to about seventy. Elizabeth then drew closer to her mother, but after Sara passed seventy, eighty, ninety, and so forth, they were close but not that close. There was always some mother-daughter friction.” —British director Bryan Forbes
“Elizabeth’s father died yesterday afternoon and I had to break the news to her. She was like a wild animal even though we’ve been expecting his death for some years.”
—from Richard Burton’s diary entry for November 21, 1968
“A young actor recently [in 2001] asked Elizabeth Taylor her advice on coming out of the closet. She said, ‘I’d say come out. And embrace those you love and that love you.’ Excellent advice. But alas more so for a non-actor.”
—producer Daniel Melnick (Making Love)
“Of course Taylor is a gay icon, known for her close friendships with gay and bisexual actors like Monty Clift, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Roddy McDowall, Laurence Harvey, etc. But it goes back further than that, since her father was gay. As was Judy Garland’s. Both their fathers died prematurely and both were deeply missed by their daughters. However, Liz stuck by her mother, while Judy detested hers—called her ‘the real Wicked Witch of the West.’” —columnist Lee Graham
“Like so many actresses whose careers were fostered by their mothers, Elizabeth’s relationship with hers grew prickly. Such mothers don’t want to cut the gilded umbilical cord . . . daughters eventually resent the control. It’s usual in such situations for the daughter to honor the mother, fiscally, but to widen their distance. Particularly once her love life takes precedence.”
—actress Rachel Kempson, widow of Michael Redgrave and mother of Vanessa
“The consensus is that Elizabeth didn’t want Sara to be all that close to Elizabeth’s children. Sara tended to give orders rather than affection. She was a disciplinarian, where Elizabeth was more easygoing with her children and had no intention of bringing them into the business. She wanted them to have basically normal and pleasant childhoods.”
—British star and friend Jean Simmons
“How normal a childhood did Elizabeth Taylor have? Her ruling parent was MGM. In 1949 the studio picked and assigned a tall blond UCLA athlete named Bob Precht to take Elizabeth to her school prom. They made a very photogenic impression.”
—former child star Roddy McDowall
“Elizabeth failed to apply discipline or limits. Her two sons were spoiled rotten, hell-raisers as boys and teens. It’s a wonder they turned out fairly okay.”
—press agent Bill Feeder
“One thing Elizabeth drummed into her kids was to live their own lives but avoid scandal. She definitely controls the purse strings; whether she’s used that to keep her kids in line I don’t know. But none has made headlines or embarrassed her, and you can bet the media was just waiting for something like that to happen.” —costar Dina Merrill (Butterfield 8)
“Some children of actors try or dabble in acting, but none of Elizabeth Taylor’s four children became famous. That speaks well for her as a mother.”
—Ricardo Montalban, none of whose offspring became famous either
“A famous and stupidly bigoted actor once asked Elizabeth if she worried about her boys being around some of her gay actor friends. Without losing her temper she said no more than she worried about her girls being around some of her straight actor friends. Elizabeth didn’t have a big intellect, but she had common sense.”
—actor Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen on TV’s Superman)
“Elizabeth has always been a loyal friend. After Montgomery Clift was no longer insurable to star in a movie, she offered the producers her big salary as a guarantee and a possible forfeit for him. Clift badly needed a comeback and she was the only one with the power and the generosity to make it possible.” —Tennessee Williams
“Monty would have been brilliant as her gay husband [in Reflections in a Golden Eye]. Unfortunately, he died before filming began. Richard [Burton, Taylor’s then-husband] had had a homosexual relationship when he was young, a fact he didn’t hide. But he didn’t want to play the gay husband. So they went and got Brando.”
—costar Shelley Winters (A Place in the Sun)
“She’s usually billed first. It’s a habit or custom of long-standing. I think most of us, the men, we don’t mind much. I, for one, did not haggle over billing. She’s just first-billed . . . that’s that.” —Marlon Brando
“When we made National Velvet Liz was 12, I think, and I remember thinking someday she might possibly be a star. But that was my picture. I never imagined she’d steal it out from under me. Which she did. Not that I hold a grudge. That movie’s super-famous now . . . thanks to her.”
—Mickey Rooney
“I knew going in that this sequel wouldn’t compare and that I was no Elizabeth Taylor. But, like, who is?” —Tatum O’Neal, about the flop International Velvet
“I loved how Elizabeth Taylor’s character fell in love with her horse . . . how they bonded and she defied society and its taboos. I could really identify with that. I’m sure thousands of girls did, and do.”
—Keira Knightley
“As a child actress Elizabeth did movies with horses and dogs. . . . She loved animals and was more comfortable around them than people, who could turn on her. She never blamed the horse that threw her and started her back problems and years of physical misery.” —costar Elsa Lanchester (Lassie, Come Home)
“Elizabeth always liked animals . . . one reason is they were gentle and didn’t speak up. As a very young star she didn’t speak up for herself. She only learned to speak up when she heard Louis B. Mayer at Metro [MGM] shouting abuse at our mother. Elizabeth immediately defended her and for the first time felt a sense of her own power.”
—brother Howard Taylor
“The focus has always been on Elizabeth Taylor’s looks. But that’s not the whole picture. Early on, she had a chipmunk named Nibbles that was her favorite pet. After National Velvet she was asked to do a book about him . . . Elizabeth illustrated the book too. That’s some kid!” —George Cukor, who directed ET in The Blue Bird
“Nibbles and Me [1946] is a darling book and a classic of its kind. Have you seen it? And she did all the illustrations, some in green, some beige. Elizabeth’s talent floored me. She could easily have gone on to be a children’s-book author and illustrator.”
—Gretchen Wyler, actress and animal-rights activist
“If she’d stayed in England, where she was born [to American parents], Elizabeth Taylor would probably have become a debutante—belle of the ball—then married well and lived happily ever after. Or not so happily. Maybe even divorced.”
—British actor Stewart Granger, husband of Jean Simmons
“Elizabeth always enjoyed shopping. But came a time her fame grew so, she couldn’t enter a shop without drawing a crowd within several minutes. So she had to have clothes sent to her home or hotel to choose from. That maintained her privacy but did away with the pleasure of going out and spending hours window-shopping or exploring boutiques and department stores.” —ET’s secretary Dick Hanley
“One has to wonder who selects Elizabeth Taylor’s public costumes. For, costumes they are, with an unwavering emphasis on cleavage that contradicts the Oscar winner’s stated self-description as a dramatic actress.”
—Hebe Dorsey, fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune
“All my life I wanted to look like Elizabeth Taylor . . . now I find she’s beginning to look like me.”
—obese female impersonator Divine
“Oh, Elizabeth Taylor!! I tried to take her to McDonald’s but she wouldn’t fit through the golden arches! She has more Chins than a Chinese phone book. Yes!! . . . It’s not mean if it’s true.” —Joan Rivers
“Like maybe there came a time after the two divorces from Dick Burton and all those movies that she just decided, Hey, I’ll eat whatever I enjoy and push all that maintenance and time and effort holding onto my looks onto the back burner. And to hell with what anybody thinks. So Elizabeth Taylor got fat. Big f---ing crime.” —Roseanne Barr
“While she was heavy, Elizabeth said she was perfectly happy. After she lost the weight she admitted the fat had been the result of unhappiness. Her relationship with the right-wing politician [John Warner] was not a happy one, as she revealed post-marriage.”
—talk show host Phil Donahue
“At lunch, Elizabeth said to me that one piece of chocolate is wonderful, and two might be. Three is okay. But more than four or five is unhealthy and unsatisfying—and psychological.”
—five-time Oscar-winning costume designer Irene Sharaff
“The way she was able to go back from being fat to being so beautiful is an absolute inspiration and proves that it can be done. I mean to lose the fat, not necessarily to become so beautiful.” —actress Kathy Najimy
“I heard that the cover photo of [the book] Hollywood Babylon II showing Liz Taylor emerging from a car looking like a lavender mountain carrying a purse was a deciding factor in her choosing to lose weight. Everyone was commenting about that awful picture. I don’t know if Liz stuck that picture on her fridge, but I’ve read Maria Callas the fat opera singer stuck a picture of skinny Audrey Hepburn on her fridge until she finally lost the weight. Whatever it takes. . . .” —Dixie Carter (Designing Women)
“As a child she was sweet and pretty as a picture. When I played the title role in Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Taylor had a bit as a little girl in the childhood sequence. Her looks and coloring, like Snow White, made her stand out. But I couldn’t foresee that when we would make another film a slight eight years later [in 1952] she would have progressed so far professionally and matrimonially. And that was only the beginning!”
—Joan Fontaine
“In Sunset Boulevard Gloria Swanson says, ‘We had faces then,’ about past stars, compared to mere types—or clones. In the 1950s we had variety then. The top four female stars were distinctly separate, each uniquely wonderful: Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day. Is there anything remotely comparable today?”
—actress-director Ida Lupino
“The most publicized movies ever are still Gone with the Wind and Cleopatra. An often overlooked fact is that the latter was supposed to star myself as Mark Anthony, Peter Finch as Julius Caesar, and Joan Collins as Cleopatra. . . . . Liz got the title role. It began filming in England . . . a ton of money was spent. Then came mystery, delays, studio politics, excuses . . . and Miss Taylor’s illnesses. Cleopatra was redesigned, rescripted, relocated to Rome with new male costars—and the rest is history.”
—Stephen Boyd (Ben-Hur)
“Elizabeth Taylor looks like two small boys fighting under a mink blanket.”
—fashion designer Mr. Blackwell of the annual Ten Worst-Dressed Women list
“For its interminable shooting period, Cleopatra was the most publicized film, and scandal, ever. By comparison, Gone with the Wind was shot overnight. Also, the actual shooting of GWTW wasn’t heavily publicized. And if anybody was committing adultery during its making, you bet it wasn’t publicized. Unlike Cleopatra!”
—columnist Lloyd Shearer
“I’d already played Egyptian in Land of the Pharaohs [1955]. . . . Peter Finch would have made a marvelous Julius Caesar—Rex Harrison [in the 1963 Taylor version] was a little old for the part. I’m not as sure about Stephen Boyd.”
—Joan Collins
“There was an earlier set of [Cleopatra] costumes . . . and had photographs of Liz Taylor wearing some of them been released to the public there would have been controversy and threatened boycotts. In one of them, more than half of her breasts are exposed, with a gold string holding up one of two white patches. Such a costume probably couldn’t have been used on screen anyway.” —costume designer Ray Aghayan
“Taylor asked for a cool million dollars when producer Walter Wanger offered her the role, which she wasn’t keen on. She didn’t believe anyone would pay that amount. Wanger said he’d get back to her. When he did, he said Fox wanted Susan Hayward to play Cleopatra. By that time, Liz coveted the role. More so, when she heard they wanted Hayward. Liz was ready to settle for $750,000 and ten percent of the gross, also numerous perks. Whatever she actually earned for the picture, when she and Fisher divorced the settlement figure agreed upon for Cleopatra was said to be $7 million.”
—Hollywood business manager Morgan Maree
“In Richard Burton, her fifth husband, Elizabeth finally found a prince consort, someone with enough looks, charm, wit, and charisma to last her . . . for quite a while. Eventually he complained that she was ‘more famous than the Queen,’ but added that he would love her until he died. Richard was often unhappy with Elizabeth, but that was his personality. Without her, he was hardly ever happy. Whatever else, they shared a tremendous passion.” —movie writer Jane Ardmore
“All told, Liz and Dick were in eleven movies together. One was just a Taylor cameo in a Burton feature [Anne of the Thousand Days]. Their last was just a TV movie, an indication of how far they’d fallen box-office-wise by 1973. At least it was reportedly the most expensive TV movie ever made—a last hurrah for the most famous couple in Hollywood history.” —film critic Robin Wood
“The public loved seeing Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on screen together because it let them in close-up on the love affair of the century. Naturally, with the passing of time and, truth to tell, some idiotic choices on the couple’s part, the attraction waned. New faces are always coming along, and the public is nothing if not fickle.”
—British actor Trevor Howard
“I remember thinking how masochistic it was of Richard and Elizabeth to insert themselves into this very personal story of divorce when it was clear to most everyone around them that divorce was looming large on their horizon.”
—actress-director Ida Lupino
“Prophetically, the final Taylor-Burton collaboration was Divorce His/Divorce Hers. It had two halves, each with a different viewpoint and justification. It did well in the ratings. Guess why . . . people wanted to believe it was more documentary than fiction. By then it was common knowledge that the lovebirds who’d sacrificed so much and undergone so much opprobrium were arguing as much, or more, than they weren’t.”
—British actress Coral Browne
“Divorce His and Divorce Hers—too long of a gimmicky, over-produced telefilm, and sheer self-exploitation. It’s Taylor-Burton-made for voyeurs by exhibitionists.”
—film critic Wyatt Cooper (Anderson’s father)
“Since they were having gargantuan, often public, marital squabbles, I guess Liz and Dick figured they might as well put it all up on the screen and get paid for it. . . . Despite their protestations, Liz and Dick reveled in publicity and high drama—and were often high doing it!” —Truman Capote
“At least after watching Liz and Dick agonize at length on television whether or not to get a divorce, when the real thing happens no one will have to be shocked. Between this ‘prestige’ small-screen offering and what one reads in the fanzines and even newspapers, one may wonder why it took so long.”
—Hollywood agent Ann Dollard
“Jacqueline Kennedy came in for almost as much criticism for simply remarrying as Elizabeth Taylor did for divorcing and re-divorcing, etc. Elizabeth and Richard were rooting for her when she married Onassis. They didn’t like him much—a rich, greasy publicity hound with no looks or class. But they felt Jackie had a right to pursue her own life. Whereas the Establishment expected Jackie, after President Kennedy’s assassination, to wear widow’s weeds until her death.” —Truman Capote
“After Marilyn died, Elizabeth and Jackie were the most famous women of the 1960s. Elizabeth was almost eclipsed by Jackie Kennedy when she married Aristotle Onassis, the Greek tycoon. For over a decade, it was Liz or Jackie, and sometimes both, on magazine covers, regularly.” —Andy Warhol, whose portrait of ET hung in her living room
“Onassis married Jackie Kennedy to what appears to be the general disapproval of the USA. . . . We shall send them a telegram of congratulations today. Dick Hanley [ET’s secretary] says Jackie will be declared a ‘public sinner.’ In a comical world the Vatican is sometimes the most comical thing in it. I remember some years ago that [they] recommended that Elizabeth was an unfit mother for her children and that they should be forcibly removed from her! Silly pompous asses.”
—from Richard Burton’s diary entry for October 21, 1968