Biography of Elizabeth Taylor | British-born American actress.

(Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, also known as Liz Taylor; London, 1932 - Los Angeles, 2011) British-born American actress. Daughter of American expatriates in the United Kingdom, returned with them to United States shortly before the second world war. After participating in several comedies of poor quality, in 1950 it reached its first critical and commercial success with the father of the bride. During the decades of 1950 and 1960 it became one of the biggest stars of the firmament of Hollywood thanks to his presence in titles as significant as giant (1956), the cat on the roof of zinc (1958) or the, by then, most expensive film in history, Cleopatra (1963), films in which knew how to exploit her sexually attractive celebrities masterfully. So famous by his film career and her love life (he married eight times), received two Oscar for their roles in a marked woman (1960) and who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). famous also for its humanitarian work in the fight against AIDS, was for this latter reason won the Prince of Asturias Award to Concord in 1992.

Elizabeth Taylor

Encouraged by his mother, who also floor tables at one time, Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor debuted as an actress when she was still a child; the attention of Hollywood executives called their willingness and an extraordinary physical appeal, who would accompany him until maturity, soon. After his short-lived time by Universal, the Metro Goldwyn Mayer offered a first interesting role in the invisible chain (1943), Fred Wilcox, beside the famous dog Lassie.

With this film, he began a career in the Metro Goldwyn Mayer that would last for twenty years. Sweet temperament, but not cloying, the children's roles played made it seem almost angelic, but at the same time he issued a great magnetism and sensuality. Her violet eyes, his accent and an improper age maturity made it impossible that it passed unnoticed.

Already in his teens and in his first youth, studies of the subway began to not know very well what to do with it, because it not mating with the stereotypes of the American girls. From the late 1940s and early 1950s she played usually rich luminous beauty girls, although there were also works where demonstrated to possess an intelligent sense of humor and a strong and passionate personality. Movies of some relevance and success were marked those years: the courage of Lassie (1946), Fred Wilcox; Little women (1949), Mervyn Leroy; Betrayal (1950), by Victor Saville; or the father of the bride (1950), Vincente Minnelli, among others.

Marked by a series of failed marriages, the actress was leaving aside the kind of film that had to accept more projects. Historical films such as Quo Vadis? (1951), LeRoy, and Ivanhoe (1952), by Richard Thorpe, anticipated in a decade one of his most famous characters, Cleopatra. His figure was gaining popularity, and their performances won in psychological depth. Thus, in giant (1956), by George Stevens, cat on the roof of zinc (1958), Richard Brooks, or a marked woman (1960), Daniel Mann, for which his first Oscar, achieved embodied women's complex personality who faced difficult situations with courage and maturity.

With Paul Newman in
Cat on the roof of zinc (1958)

It was thus losing the aura of young, delicate and infantile, and began to feel attracted to roles of tough women suffering psychological pressure, a style that was going to be a constant throughout the rest of his career, perhaps because such interpretations allowed to reflect your own personality; his life experience had made him go through difficult situations throughout their multiple marriages.

Cleopatra (1963), was a milestone in his career of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and its relationship with Richard Burton, which began during the filming of this movie. Elizabeth Taylor played the Queen of Egypt in Exchange for a million dollars, astronomical figure for an actress in those years. The actress was aware of their high status and that everyone considered it a star. Their whims were making antipatica, and his health began to show its fragility. With Burton, who married twice, lived the most stormy romance and that most honda footprint left in his private and professional life.

Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra (1963)

His role in who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Mike Nichols, earned him his second Oscar, and was the trigger for a radical change in his career. Alcoholic woman, sharp tongue and that he is no longer young, allowed him to show new facets of his personality, something for which she had fought since it embodied the wife of Rock Hudson in giant. Since then, and in titles such as the indomitable woman (1966), Franco Zefirelli; Reflections in a golden eye (1967), John Huston; or the damn woman (1968), Joseph Losey, it was rebelling against academicism and the sweetening of those first jobs in the Metro Goldwyn Mayer that had given out.

In 1981, already in full maturity, he debuted on Broadway in a montage of the she-Wolf, of Lillian Hellman. In his last years he took part in programmes and in episodes of various TV series (Hotel, The Whoopi Goldberg Show, Roseanne, Hight Society, Murphy Brown , and the nanny, among others). On the one hand away from his profession, spared no however his public appearances, which adopted a Baroque image, displaying his obsessive love of jewels, and acting with a pronounced theatricality that always gave the feeling of being premeditated, often a shield to be able to dispense with certain extent of his attributes of big star.

At the same time he developed an important activity to help those suffering from AIDS in the United States, and in 1993 received an honorary Oscar. In October 2009 the actress joined in a Los Angeles hospital for a heart operation. Two years later, with his death in Los Angeles, disappeared an essential chapter in the history of the Golden Hollywood, a legendary actress to endure in the memory not only by their physical attractiveness but mainly by the force of its emotional interpretations.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas