Elizabeth taylor

His stormy and pathetic sentimental life has never been able to disfigure the legend of one of the most beautiful faces in the history of cinema. No doubt Elizabeth Taylor gifted viewers with many memorable characters, but none reached the magnitude of Maggie, that superlatively charming, hypocritical, feline woman who flitted around Paul Newman in Richard Brooks ‘ masterpiece Cat on a Tin Roof. (1958). Then the actress was only 26 years old, but she had already reached the peak of her beauty and a fame destined for very few stars in history.

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in London on February 27, 1932, but very soon, at the beginning of World War II, she moved with her parents to Los Angeles. There is an anecdote that perfectly defines the strong and ambitious temperament that Elizabeth showed from her childhood: on April 3, 1939, at the age of seven, she was stunned to see Shirley Temple ‘s performance in a movie and that’s when she took a determination that would mark his life. As she left the screening room, she turned to her mother and said, “I don’t want to be a movie star… I want to be an actress” (needless to say, fate would see to it that she did both). Well, said and done. At the age of 10, little Liz entered Universal Studios and debuted inThere’s One Born Every Minute , but the movie was a flop. Then MGM hired her to accompany the dog Lassie in The Invisible Chain (1942) and that did mean the takeoff of the child prodigy. Her precocity was flaunted to the four winds and the media pampered her without fissures. The roles of her adorable little girl were repeated during that decade until she stood out especially in Little Women (1949), Mervyn Leroy ‘s version of the famous novel by Louisa May Alcott .

But it was in the 50’s when Elizabeth Taylor forged her fame: first with her beauty; second, with her innumerable flirtations and breakups (which have been repeated throughout her life); and finally with a good handful of films of remarkable quality. Regarding the first point, the famous writer Truman Capotewrote: “Her legs are too short for her torso and her head is too bulky for the whole. But her face, with those lilac eyes, is a convict’s dream, the face any secretary craves: unreal and unattainable, and at the same time shy, exceedingly vulnerable and very human, with a faint glint of suspicion glowing in her face. bottom of those lilac eyes”. Regarding her sentimental chapter, we must highlight her very close love-hate relationship with Richard Burton , whom she married twice. A total of eight marriages, seven divorces and a period of widowhood is the sad balance of her innumerable whims.

In any case, what Taylor did or did not do with her private life has nothing to do with her wonderful facet in front of the cameras. From the 50s are his films A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956), Cat on a Zinc Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), already converted into seventh art classics. In the following decade, that monumental work called Cleopatra (1963) and the two Oscars she received for her roles in A Marked Woman (1960) stand out – quite surprising considering that Shirley MacLaine was also nominated for The Apartment – ​​and in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1966), this one perfectly deserved. However, in the 1970s the success that had smiled on him throughout his life began to wane and since then he only made headlines when he underwent a new operation – he underwent more than twenty in his life and overcame a brain tumor – or attested to their charitable activities. But, anyway, the nostalgic will always be able to remember his splendor thanks to his films and… in his eyes, those stars of unbearable beauty that astonished the world 50 years ago.