INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

While still a teenager Elizabeth was the first child actress to refuse Louis B. Mayer a kiss on the cheek during his annual birthday celebration on MGM's largest sound stage.

Her customary parting present to lovers was a gold watch inscribed: "Forget Me Not."

Elizabeth's face was insured for $1 million during Ash Wednesday should any damage occur as a result of the extensive makeup requirements."

Her Hebrew name was Elisheba Rachel.

Her favorite couturier was Marc Bohan of Christian Dior, with whom she remained associated for decades. Over the years, she purchased a hundred separate outfits from Dior, but whenever she bought anything, she expected an accompanying gift... a certain belt, scarf, or chapeau.

Unbeknownst to Elizabeth, her husband Mike Todd made an entire series of tape recordings of their lovemaking sessions and frequently presented the tapes as mementos to friends and business associates.

For the kissing scene in Conspirator Elizabeth wore only a black negligee on the set. According to the press agents, Robert Taylor developed a hard-on during the shooting and it proved a total embarrassment. He tried talking to the cameraman to rectify the situation. "You're going to have to shoot me from the waist up," he urged.

Elizabeth had two early major crushes-- Vic Damone, the singer, and Peter Lawford, the M-G-M actor born in England.

As a child, Elizabeth suffered from hypertrichosis, a glandular condition which can cause a heavy growth of body hair. Her arms, shoulders, and back were covered with a thick downy pelt. The infant looked like a little monkey. Although doctors assured her mother the condition would correct itself, it continued to plague Elizabeth for years.

Between 1947 and 1994 Elizabeth had no fewer than seventy-three illnesses, injuries and accidents requiring hospitalization.

Backed by a $10 million promotional campaign and priced at $200 an ounce, Elizabeth Taylor's Passion was, by 1995, the fourth biggest-selling women's fragrance in America-- and, with her share of the income, it made Elizabeth Taylor one of the richest women in America.

In 1983 at typical day at home for Elizabeth began with Bloody Marys for breakfast, wine with lunch, Jack Daniel's at cocktail time, and perhaps a half dozen glasses of wine with dinner.

From 1980 to 1985, Elizabeth was issued more than 1,000 prescriptions for twenty-eight different sleeping pills, tranquilizers and painkillers by three doctors who were later reprimanded by a medical board.

For her part in the play The Little Foxes (1981) Elizabeth was paid more than any stage actor had ever received: more than $50,000 a week.

When she gained twenty-five pounds for the part of Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), Elizabeth insisted that the press be told that the added pounds were for the movie, and that she did not have an eating disorder.

By 1963 Elizabeth had won unprecedented control over her image in the movies. She had the right to approve her own costumes, hairstyles and makeup designs; no publicity stills were released without her permission; she had the right to accept or reject the final version of the script and the producer's choice of director; and if she objected to certain takes or sequences, her resentment would not be risked by any studio.

Elizabeth gifted Michael Jackson with a four-ton elephant named Gypsy for his zoo at Neverland.

Between her marriages to Mike Todd and Eddie Fisher, Elizabeth was formally accepted into the Jewish faith. When she further expressed her solidarity by purchasing Israeli bonds, her movies were forthwith banned in Egypt; by year's end, the Arab League had gone further and issued an injunction against the screening of all her pictures in every Arab country of the Middle East and Africa.

Throughout her marriage to Eddie Fisher, Elizabeth continued to wear Mike Todd's wedding band-- Eddie's on her left hand, Mike's on her right hand.  The twisted, charred band had been recovered from the wreckage after Mike had been killed in a plane crash. 

When Elizabeth left Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for Twentieth Century Fox, MGM changed the name of its commissary's 'Elizabeth Taylor Salad' to the 'Lana Turner Salad.'

When she was staying at the Dorchester in London for filming of Cleopatra, Elizabeth ordered chili flown over from Chasen's in Los Angeles, stone crabs from the coast of Florida, smoked salmon from Barney Greengrass in New York, sirloin steaks from Chicago, shrimp creole from New Orleans, spare ribs from St. Louis, white asparagus from the French countryside and fresh linguini from Genoa.

Her father, Francis, was a homosexual. Hollywood insiders were aware that he was having an affair with MGM fashion designer Adrian, married to actress Janet Gaynor.

Marlene Dietrich once referred to Elizabeth as 'that British tart with big tits.'

Shortly after she had completed Little Women, Howard Hughes offered her father a million dollars for Elizabeth's hand in marriage. She cringed at the idea and turned up her nose when Hughes handed her a box of priceless gems. Though shocked at the thought of 'selling' his daughter, Francis was tempted by the million-dollar offer and regretted not following up on the idea.

Mattel has made a doll with costumes styled to look just like her.

At age fifteen she was dubbed 'the most beautiful woman in America' by Hedda Hopper.

On December 3rd of 1993 she spoke Maggie's first word -- "Daddy" -- on The Simpsons.

She never read an entire script, just her own lines.

According to Richard Burton, "Her breasts were apocalyptic, they would topple empires down before they withered."

Burton was the man she fought hardest to keep, and the man she would have probably tried to win back again had he lived.

When Charles Manson was picked up after the murder of Sharon Tate in 1969, he had a list of Hollywood celebs he wanted to kill. Liz was among them.

Sunbathed so much during the making of 1963's Cleopatra that the film required extensive color-correction to even out her changes in skin tone.

When Richard Burton's wife visited the set of Cleopatra, the incident upset his mistress Elizabeth so much that she cried all night and couldn't shoot the next day because of her red, swollen eyes.

As David Niven introduced Elizabeth, the presenter of the Best Picture award at the 1973 Academy Awards, a naked man holding a peace sign ran across the stage. The orchestra broke into a rendition of "Sunny Side Up."

Looking at photographs of nine-year-old actor Elizabeth, a casting agent opined "The kid has nothing. Her eyes are too old."

She was the first celebrity to acknowledge a stay in the Betty Ford Clinic.

She does not like being called 'Liz'. The reason why she came to hate the name Liz, was because during childhood she was called 'Lizzie the Lizard' by her brother, Howard?

Her dear friend, Montgomery Clift, nicknamed her 'Bessie Mae'.  He said "Only I can call you Bessie Mae", apparently, he wanted to call her something different because the whole world knew her as Elizabeth Taylor.

Soon after Burton purchased the historic 'La Peregrina' pearl for Elizabeth, he scoured the art market for a portrait of the pearl being worn by its most famous owner, Queen Mary I, aka 'Bloody Mary'. One was found. Upon the purchase of the painting, the Burtons found out that the National Portrait Gallery in London did not have an original painting of their former Queen, so they donated the painting to the Gallery.

In addition to 'La Peregrina', Taylor owns another piece of historic jewelry, an elaborate enameled bracelet once owned by Napoleon's wife, Josephine Bonapart.

She received her first-ever kiss - 'politely pecked, like a handshake' - from a teenage co-star on the film Cynthia. "It was humiliating," she said, "being kissed on screen before real life.""

Following Elizabeth's early film success, their mother Sara set up a meeting for her son with a studio executive, but by then Howard had seen that fame hadn't made his sister happy and shaved off all his hair to avoid being auditioned.

Aged nine, Elizabeth was earning more than her father - a fact that he found very difficult to live with. "He batted me around a bit," Elizabeth revealed in 1999. But despite his resentment, he was ready to spend the money. By the time she was in her mid teens, Elizabeth was keeping her family in palatial style.

Her performance in National Velvet is one of her two favourites, the other being in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?

Her husband Mike Todd's plane was called 'The Lucky Liz'. It proved very unlucky, because it crashed over a mountain range in New Mexico, killing him.

When her dear friend, actor Montgomery Clift, was involved in a severe car accident, Liz was one of the first to turn up at the accident spot. He was choking. She put her fingers in his mouth and found an obstruction lodged in his throat. She pulled it out. It was two of his front teeth. Her action saved his life. He later had one of the teeth mounted on a silver strand, which he gave Elizabeth as a token of his appreciation. She occasionally wore it as a necklace.

In 1985, following the death of dear friend Rock Hudson, Elizabeth took a public stand - the first great star to do so - in support of AIDS research, becoming a tireless advocate through the American Federation for AIDS Research (AmFar) and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.

Elizabeth Taylor's perfumes have been Passions (1987), White Diamonds (1991) and Black Pearls (1995).

Taylor has four children and nine grandchildren.

Liz has appeared solo on the cover of People Magazine 14 times, second only to Princess Diana.

Between Taylor's 14th and 15th birthdays, it became clear that the child star was blossoming into a major sex object, boasting a 35in bust, 34in hips and a 22in waist. She caused censors such concern that they insisted on a bizarre test to ensure decency was maintained on screen. An orange would be placed in Elizabeth's cleavage, and if the cameraman could see the orange, he had to move the camera back. Studio executives known as B.I.s (bust inspectors) regularly patrolled the sets, ordering a higher-cut dress when too much bosom was visible. But as soon as they left, Elizabeth bared as much as the law allowed, loving to show off her developing figure.