English is FUNtastic: Elizabeth Taylor

23.3.11

Elizabeth Taylor

Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor has died aged 79 after suffering from heart problems and other health issues in recent years.

The two-time Oscar winner died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles surrounded by her four children after being hospitalised six weeks ago with congestive heart failure, her publicist Sally Morrison said.
"My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humour, and love," son Michael Wilding said in a statement.
"Though her loss is devastating to those of us who held her so close and so dear, we will always be inspired by her enduring contribution to our world."
Taylor won best actress Oscars for Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf in 1966 and Butterfield 8 in 1960, while she was Oscar-nominated for her roles in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly, Last Summer and Raintree County.
She achieved stardom at the tender age of 12 in National Velvet.
As an adult, she became famous for her acting and her beauty as well as her eight marriages - twice to actor Richard Burton.
In 2004, it was announced Taylor suffered congestive heart failure in which the heart cannot pump enough blood to organs.
She had to undergo heart surgery in 2009 to replace a leaky valve.
Taylor has been using a wheelchair for more than five years to cope with chronic pain after breaking her back four times, and she has had three hip replacement operations, a benign brain tumour, skin cancer and pneumonia.

Glamour and tumult

Taylor's personal life set a Hollywood standard for glamour and tumult.
After the death of her third husband, film producer Mike Todd, in 1958, she found herself in a well-chronicled love triangle with singer Eddie Fisher and his wife actress Debbie Reynolds, before marrying Fisher.
While filming the lavishly produced Cleopatra in 1961, she started a torrid, tabloid-chronicled affair with Richard Burton, who played Mark Antony and who was also married at the time.
Taylor's relationship with Burton was a saga in itself. The two strong-willed actors wed in 1964 after she divorced Fisher, and Burton bestowed furs and diamonds, including a $US1 million pear-shaped jewel, on Taylor while publicly praising her "wonderful bosom".
But they also hurled invective at one another and were brilliantly cast in the movie of dramatist Edward Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? about a bitter, verbally abusive couple.
"We enjoy fighting," Taylor once said. "Having an out-and-out, outrageous, ridiculous fight is one of the greatest exercises in marital togetherness."
Taylor has not appeared on screen since the 2001 TV movie Old Broads.

in http://www.abc.net.au/

Taylor was also one of the earliest Hollywood activists fighting against AIDS. After her friend and co-star Rock Hudson died of the disease, she decided she could not sit back any longer. Taylor joined with a group of physicians and scientists to form amfAR in 1985. "I could no longer take a passive role as I watched several people I knew and loved die a painful, slow and lonely death," Taylor said in an interview about her activism. "Even if we make the smallest gesture, at least we are making an impact.” Taylor went on to found an organization that bore her own name and it’s one of the few celebrity AIDS charities to focus primarily on victims in the United States. Taylor dedicated the past 25 years of her life to battling the epidemic, testifying on Capitol Hill, paying visits to victims in hospitals, and lobbying politicians for funds to find a cure. “I hope with all of my heart that in some way I have made a difference in the lives of people with AIDS," Taylor once said. “I want that to be my legacy. Better that than for the mole on my cheek.”