Elizabeth Taylor — Actress, Humanitarian, The Most Famous Woman in the World

Biography

From Hampstead to Martha

Born Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor on February 27, 1932, in Hampstead, London — the daughter of an American art dealer and a former stage actress, both American citizens. The family returned to California at the outbreak of WWII; Elizabeth was seven. MGM signed her at nine. She appeared in Lassie Come Home at ten and National Velvet at twelve, giving a performance of unsettling maturity in the latter that made her a star before adolescence.

The transition from child star to adult actress — the journey most fail to complete — she accomplished with something approaching ease. Montgomery Clift's influence during the filming of A Place in the Sun (1951) introduced her to a more interior style of acting; their chemistry produced one of Hollywood's great screen romances. George Stevens understood what the camera was seeing and let it see it.

Four Oscar nominations before Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf — for Raintree County, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, and Butterfield 8 — established the pattern: the Academy acknowledged her repeatedly but seemed reluctant to commit. Her first win, for Butterfield 8 (1961), was widely considered a sympathy vote following her near-death from pneumonia. Her second win, for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) — Martha, the barnstorming intellectual drunk who strips every pretension from her husband and herself — was not.

In 1985 she became the first major Hollywood figure to publicly advocate for AIDS research and fundraising, when the disease was stigmatised and the entertainment industry was largely silent. She raised hundreds of millions for the cause over the following decades. She died on March 23, 2011, aged seventy-nine, from congestive heart failure.

1932

Born in Hampstead, London; MGM at age 9

1944

National Velvet — star at 12; unsettling adult maturity

1951

A Place in the Sun — Clift; the adult actress arrived

1958–60

3 consecutive Oscar nominations; the Academy hesitates

1961

Oscar won — Butterfield 8; sympathy after pneumonia

1966

Oscar won — Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf; Martha; no sympathy needed

1985

First Hollywood star to publicly champion AIDS research

Filmography

From A Place in the Sun to Virginia Woolf

1966Drama · Albee · Mike Nichols

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Mike Nichols' Edward Albee adaptation — Taylor as Martha, the barnstorming faculty wife who spends a night dismantling her husband's illusions and her own. Her second and definitive Academy Award: a performance of volcanic emotional power and surgical intelligence deployed simultaneously.

Oscar Win

Taylor aged herself physically for the role — convincingly, at thirty-three — and then gave a performance of such comprehensive emotional truth that the physical transformation became almost irrelevant. Martha is the most technically demanding role she ever played and the one that proved the beauty was not the instrument but the carrier. Nichols put the camera six inches from her face and she never blinked.

1951Romance · Drama · George Stevens

A Place in the Sun

George Stevens' Dreiser adaptation — Taylor as Angela Vickers, the luminous society girl whose love for Montgomery Clift's social climber constitutes the film's argument about American ambition and its costs. Her first great adult performance, opposite her closest friend.

Stevens' close-ups of Taylor — which Stevens called the most photogenic face he had ever filmed — were not mere beauty worship but the documentation of a genuine emotional instrument being used. Her Angela is both the dream and the trap, and she understands both functions. The chemistry with Clift is the most natural romantic heat in 1950s American cinema.

1959Drama · Tennessee Williams · Mankiewicz

Suddenly, Last Summer

Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Tennessee Williams film — Taylor as Catherine Holly, a young woman whose account of a devastating event is the secret that the film's other characters are determined to suppress through lobotomy. An Oscar-nominated performance of controlled hysteria.

Oscar Nom

Catherine's extended monologue — recounting what she witnessed — is the film's climax and Taylor's finest scene before Virginia Woolf: a sustained performance of mounting horror that requires her to hold an audience through pure vocal and physical control. Katharine Hepburn later said Taylor gave the performance that year's Oscar should have recognised.

1958Drama · Tennessee Williams · Brooks

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Richard Brooks' Williams adaptation — Taylor as Maggie the Cat, the sexually frustrated wife whose desire for her alcoholic husband is the film's central energy. Her Oscar nomination; Paul Newman's finest film; the screen's most combustible unrequited marriage.

Oscar Nom

Maggie the Cat's desire is not decorative but structural — the film's entire tension runs through her body and her voice — and Taylor sustains it for two hours with unwavering physical presence. The scene in which she confronts Newman's Brick in their bedroom is the most charged single scene in 1950s American cinema.

Honors

Two Oscars — the Second One Earned Without Argument

Academy Award — Best Actress

1961

Butterfield 8

First Oscar — widely considered a sympathy vote after near-fatal pneumonia. She knew it. She used it to prove she deserved the next one.

Oscar Won

Academy Award — Best Actress

1967

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Second Oscar — Martha; no sympathy required. The definitive performance of her career, acknowledged without dissent by the Academy for once.

Oscar Won

Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award

1993

AIDS Research Advocacy

Honorary Oscar for humanitarian work — specifically her founding of amfAR and raising hundreds of millions for AIDS research when Hollywood was silent

Jean Hersholt Award

AFI Lifetime Achievement

2004

Career Tribute

American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement — for a career spanning six decades and a humanity that extended far beyond the screen

AFI Lifetime

Artistic Identity

The Beauty That Was the Container, Not the Contents

The Violet Eyes

Genuinely violet-coloured — a mutation that occurs in nature and that the Technicolor process documented with unusual precision. The eyes were not merely beautiful; they expressed emotion at a register the camera could access before the performance technically began. George Stevens built a film around them.

Martha

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is the definitive demonstration that the beauty was instrumental rather than decorative. Taylor gained weight, aged herself with makeup, and then performed the role with a devastating emotional precision that had nothing to do with appearance and everything to do with craft.

The Marriages

Eight marriages including twice to Richard Burton — the most publicly scrutinised romantic life in Hollywood history — were simultaneously a private human story and the raw material for a cultural myth. She refused to be reduced to it: the work, the friendships, the advocacy were always the larger story.

The Advocacy

In 1985, when AIDS had no Hollywood advocates and considerable Hollywood stigma, she was the first major star to publicly demand attention and funding for the epidemic. Her founding of amfAR and decades of fundraising constitutes a legacy independent of and equal to her acting career.

Legacy

The Talent the Beauty Made Easy to Overlook

Elizabeth Taylor's legacy is threefold: the acting, the beauty, and the advocacy — and the most enduring of these is the one least associated with her name. Her decision in 1985 to stand publicly for AIDS research, when the cause had no other advocates of her visibility, saved lives that cannot be counted. The Jean Hersholt Award recognised it; the work's scale exceeded any award.

Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is her artistic monument — a performance that demolished the critical tendency to confuse the instrument with the musician. The beauty was not the talent; the beauty was the thing the talent used. Mike Nichols understood this from the first day of production. The film is the documentation of his understanding and her confirmation of it.

Academy Awards Won

Butterfield 8 · Virginia Woolf

Oscar Nominations

Five across two decades

Times Married

Including twice to Richard Burton

Years of AIDS Advocacy

1985 to her death in 2011