Film legend Elizabeth Taylor dies at 79 in LA

The Nation

Related Photos

FILE - In this 1957 file photo, Elizabeth Taylor poses with Montgomery Clift for the film "Raintree County." (AP Photo/File)
FILE - This 1961 file photo shows actress Elizabeth Taylor in the film "Butterfield 8" in 1961. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - In this 1957 file photo, actress Elizabeth Taylor is shown with her husband Mike Todd. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - In this Jan. 27, 1985 file photo, Liza Minelli, left, hugs actress Elizabeth Taylor, who holds her Cecil B. DeMille award in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Lennox McLendon, File)
FILE - In a Sept. 22, 1951 file photo, Elizabeth Taylor is shown at the premiere of "The Lady with the Lamp" at the Warner Theater in London. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - In this Sept. 25, 1953 file photo, actress Elizabeth Taylor stands on the balcony of the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - This Jan. 30, 1977 file photo shows actress Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, former secretary of the U.S. Navy John Warner, at the 42nd New York Film Critics Circle Awards dinner in New York. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - This 1966 file photo shows Elizabeth Taylor in the role of Martha, and Richard Burton in the role of George in a scene from the 1966 movie "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (AP Photo/File)
FILE - In this April 19, 1961 file photo, actress Elizabeth Taylor holds the Oscar she won as 1960's best film actress for her role in "Butterfield 8," while speaking with reporters in Hollywood, Calif. (AP Photo/File)
FILE- This 1983 file photo shows actress Elizabeth Taylor and actor Richard Burton, one of Taylor's former husbands, posing during a rehearsal for the Broadway revival in New York of Noel Coward's "Private Lives." (AP Photo/File)
FILE - This Sept. 1946 file photo shows Elizabeth Taylor. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - In this May 31, 1950 file photo, actress Elizabeth Taylor poses with her new husband, hotel heir Nick Hilton, as they stand on the terrace of their hotel room in Paris while on their honeymoon. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - In a 1944 file photo, young actress Elizabeth Taylor is seen during the time that she was filming "National Velvet". (AP Photo/File)
FILE - In this 1957 file photo, actress Elizabeth Taylor is shown in costume for her character in the film "Raintree County."
FILE - This 1951 file photo shows actress Elizabeth Taylor with actor Michael Wilding. (AP Photo/File)

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March 23, 2011

Film legend Elizabeth Taylor dies at 79 in LA

BOB THOMAS Associated Press Wed Mar 23, 2011, 10:14 AM EDT

LOS ANGELES — Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen life was often upstaged by her stormy personal life, died Wednesday at age 79.

She died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized for about six weeks, publicist Sally Morrison said.

"My Mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love," her son, Michael Wilding, said in a statement.

"We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts."

Wilding and Taylor's three other children were with her. She is also survived buy 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Taylor had extraordinary grace, fame and wealth, and won three Oscars, including a special one for her humanitarian work. But she was tortured by ill health, failed romances and personal tragedy.

"I think I'm becoming fatalistic," she said in 1989. "Too much has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic."

Her eight marriages — including two to actor Richard Burton — and a lifelong battle with substance abuse, physical ailments and overeating made Taylor as popular in supermarket tabloids as in classic film festivals.

Taylor disclosed in November 2004 that she had congestive heart failure. But she still periodically dismissed reports that she was at death's door, saying she used a wheelchair only because of chronic back problems that began at age 12 when she fell from a horse.

"Oh, come on, do I look like I'm dying?" she said in May 2006 in a rare television interview on CNN's "Larry King Live." ''Do I look like or sound like I have Alzheimer's?" Tabloids report such things "because they have nothing else dirty to write about anybody else," she said.

When she turned 75 the following year, she was asked about the secret to her longevity and quipped: "Hangin' in."

The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18, a screen goddess at 19 and a widow at 26.

She appeared in more than 50 films, and won Oscars for her performances in "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), in which she starred opposite Burton.

In later years, she was a spokeswoman for several causes, most notably AIDS research. Her work gained her a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993.

As she accepted it, she told a worldwide television audience: "I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being — to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame."

She accepted her many health problems with a stoic attitude.

"My body's a real mess," Taylor told W magazine in 2004. "If you look at it in the mirror, it's just completely convex and concave."