I haven’t had a quiet life. I’ve lived dangerously. Sometimes disaster has come at me like a train. There have been times when I’ve almost drunk myself to death. I’ve been in situations where I was perilously close to killing myself. I’ve almost died several times. Yet some instinct, some inner force, has always saved me, dragging me back just as the train whooshed past.
—Elizabeth Taylor
Broad. Dame. Home-wrecker. The most beautiful woman in the world: It was never easy being Elizabeth Taylor, international movie star and femme fatale. A woman of seemingly contradictory passions—as extravagant as she was generous, and as gentle as she was poised for battle—Elizabeth was often misunderstood by her adoring audience, her family, and even, at times, by herself. Her outsize flair for living brought her to the brink of disaster time and time again as she tested the outer limits of her indulgences. Nothing, it seemed, from expensive jewelry to torrid love affairs, could satiate Elizabeth’s inner desires. It was only later in life, with her dedicated charity work, that Elizabeth found the peace and stability she sought so desperately.
But who was Elizabeth Taylor? On her own, away from the glare of the paparazzi, the adoring fans, and the many men who loved her, what made Elizabeth Taylor’s heart skip a beat? What inspired her sense of glamour, her steely inner core? To understand the elements that made Elizabeth tick, one must go back to her childhood. Her unique upbringing not only helped shape the woman she became, but also forecasted her future as one of Hollywood’s most talented stars and uncompromising beauties.
Born in England in 1932 to a well-to-do American family with strong connections to the British upper class, Elizabeth was blessed with a beauty that made people stop and stare. Her mother, Sara, recognized Elizabeth’s alluring qualities and downplayed them, if only to emphasize the importance of personality and willpower over physical attributes. It was not until the Taylor family moved to Hollywood that Sara, a former stage actress, understood that Elizabeth’s beauty was a powerful calling card, one that gave the family a valuable entrée into the industry’s top-level studios and social circles. Sara dedicated her full attention to Elizabeth, priming her for a career in which she herself had achieved only modest success. Elizabeth learned, at an incredibly early age, that perfection in performance meant everything. She endured her mother’s strict training as preparation for a life of greatness and reluctantly accepted the fact that there was little or no margin for error. The rebellious nature and wicked tongue that would later come to define Elizabeth Taylor may have been a reaction to the intense scrutiny she suffered as a child. It seemed that everyone—from her perfectionist mother to the cadre of studio execs, agents, and audiences—were waiting and watching for Elizabeth to enter the full bloom of profitable womanhood. If there was ever a need to rebel, Elizabeth Taylor certainly had more than her share of reasons.
By the time she was twelve years old, Elizabeth boasted an impressive resumé, having starred in Lassie Come Home and National Velvet. By the time she reached fifteen, she was an established star and, as she took on more adult roles, her costars were no longer dogs and horses, but some of Hollywood’s most desirable leading men. In 1956, she starred opposite Rock Hudson and James Dean in Giant. That role firmly cemented her position as one of Hollywood’s reigning actresses, and the hits that followed came in short order: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958); Suddenly, Last Summer (1959); BUtterfield 8 (1960); and Cleopatra (1963). It was on the set of Cleopatra that Elizabeth met her greatest love, Richard Burton.
Elizabeth and Richard ruled over Hollywood for fifteen years, predecessors to the Brangelina and TomKat hysteria that sells the tabloids today. Elizabeth’s whirlwind affair with Burton defined scandal, captured the world’s attention and imagination, and brought condemnation from the Vatican. Their relationship was punctuated by every kind of excess imaginable, from booze to brawls to total sexual abandon. It was the kind of love Elizabeth craved. Full of larger-than-life highs and profoundly crippling lows, the relationship clearly wasn’t perfect, yet that was part of its appeal. Having spent her whole life in the public eye, Elizabeth, at last, felt free. She followed her own rules and did what she pleased, relishing in complete ownership of her life. Though her health paid the price for her having lived so extravagantly for so long, she achieved what few among us ever do: the ability to experience everything life has to offer. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Big Daddy Pollitt says, “I’ve got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?” As if taking a cue from these lines, Elizabeth Taylor answers yes, again and again.
A fiercely private person despite her dramatic public outbursts, Elizabeth preferred to simply get down to the business of living her life instead of talking about it. Still, over her lifetime she imparted several gems of wit and wisdom that covered every subject: sex and scandal, beauty and humility, the importance of having a sense of humor, and the truth about dying. As a woman who’d been through it all, she served as a model for living an inspired life and gave millions of women permission to follow their passions, even when conventional wisdom told them not to.
Here, then, is Elizabeth, uncensored, exactly as she would have wanted it.