Wednesday, March 23, 2011

RIP: Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011)

Elizabeth Taylor passed away today at the age of 79. She was one of the last links to the glamorous Hollywood of decades long ago and made her reputation in such movies as Cleopatra and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf but her promising career took off after appearing in National Velvet as a 12-year-old in 1944.

From Cleopatra:


Taylor had long been fodder for the tabloids because of her multiple marriages to everyone from Richard Burton (twice) to Conrad Hilton and Eddie Fischer.

She won two Academy Awards for Best Actress. One was for her performance in Butterfield 8 in 1960, and the other was for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1966.

A video tribute.

One thing I didn't know about her was that she had converted to Judaism in 1959.

While health issues slowed her in her later years, she became an ardent spokesperson for AIDS research, and counted Rock Hudson among her close friends.

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