played the title role. According to film scholar Alexander Doty,
she “emerged from the experience even more famous than she
had been going into the project”. She became the first actress
to be paid $1 million for a film role, and Fox also granted
her ten per cent of the film’s profits. The film’s production —
characterised by costly sets and costumes, constant delays, and
a scandal caused by Taylor’s extramarital affair with her co-star
Richard Burton— was closely followed by the media, with Life
proclaiming it the “Most Talked About Movie Ever Made” It
opened to mixed reviews and in retrospect, Liz called Cleopatra
a “low point” in her career stating that the studio cut out the
scenes which provided the “core of the characterisation”. But it
was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966, which featured
the most critically acclaimed performance of her career. She and
Burton starred as Martha and George, a middle-aged couple
going through a marital crisis. Liz received her second Academy
Award, a BAFTA, a National Board of Review and a New
York City Film Critics Circle awards for her performance. She
continued to make films after the success of Virginia Woolf but
it was clear that her film career was in decline, making way for
the new breed of actresses like Jane Fonda and Julie Christie.
Dubbed “Liz and Dick” by the media, Taylor and Burton starred
together in eleven films and led a jet set lifestyle, spending
millions on “furs, diamonds, paintings, designer clothes, travel,
food, liquor, a yacht, and a jet”. It was said that they “became
a cottage industry of speculation about their alleged life of
excess. From reports of massive spending ... affairs, and even
an open marriage, the couple came to represent a new era of
“gotcha” celebrity coverage, where the more personal the story,
the better”. In 1969, Burton famously gave her the TaylorBurton diamond, a huge 68 carat rock costing $1.1 million.
Burton wrote in his diary that “I wanted that diamond because
it is incomparably lovely ... and it should be on the loveliest
woman in the world”. Burton had previously bought Taylor the
33.19-carat Krupp Diamond in May 1968 at a cost of $307,000.
Taylor subsequently wore the Taylor-Burton diamond at the
42nd Academy Awards where she presented the Academy
Award for Best Picture to Midnight Cowboy at the ceremony – a
gay themed movie about male hustlers in New York City starring
John Voigt and Dustin Hoffman
However by the early 70’s, the public were tiring their volatile
marriage and over-the-top jetset lifestyle. Their last film
together was Divorce His, Divorce Hers in 1973, fittingly named
as they divorced the following year
Taylor was both one of the last stars of classical Hollywood
cinema, Hollywood’s Golden Era, and one of the first modern
celebrities. During the era of the studio system, she exemplified
the classic film star; portrayed as different from “ordinary”
people, and with a public image carefully constructed and
controlled by MGM. When the era of classical Hollywood ended
in the 1960s and paparazzi photography became a normal
feature in media culture, Liz came to define a new type of
celebrity, whose real private life was the focus of public interest.
According to Adam Bernstein of The Washington Post, “more
than for any film role, she became famous for being famous,
setting a media template for later generations of entertainers,
models and all variety of semi-somebodies.”[
Despite all the outward signs of her success, the one thing that
has always eluded Elizabeth Taylor was happiness. This struck
a note with her gay audience. Her appeal to the gay community
came from not only from her beauty and celebrity, but also from
this seemingly inability to find happiness. Famously married
eight times, the tragic star seemed unable to find true love, and
gay men the world over identified and sympathised with the
tragic heroine. She was also a victim of domestic violence and
sometimes lashed out herself and at times seemed to be hellbent on self-destruction, attempting suicide on one occasion
and abusing her body with near-fatal cocktails of alcohol and
drugs on many others.
But it was her charity work and activism addressing the AIDS
crisis that cemented her gay iconic status. From the mid-1980s
until her death, Taylor devoted much of her time to HIV/AIDS
activism and fundraising, becoming one of the first celebrities to
do so at a time when few acknowledged the disease, and helping
to raise more than $270 million for the cause. Taylor started
her philanthropic work in 1984, after becoming frustrated with
the disease being talked about in the media, but “nobody was
doing anything about it”. She began by helping to organise and
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