Elizabeth Taylor is Dead

Once known as the most beautiful actress in Hollywood, screen legend and AIDS activist Elizabeth Taylor died this morning of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles at 1:28am. She was 79 and the fiercest bitch this planet has ever known.

She died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles surrounded by her four children after having been hospitalized six weeks ago with congestive heart failure, a statement from publicist Sally Morrison said. In a career spanning seven decades, Taylor was nominated for five Oscars and won the best actress honor twice. In real life, she battled excess weight and drug addiction, and was married eight times, including twice to actor Richard Burton. "My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love. Though her loss is devastating to those of us who held her so close and so dear, we will always be inspired by her enduring contribution to our world," son Michael Wilding said in a statement. The violet-eyed Taylor, who began her movie career at age 10 and was often ranked in fan polls as the most beautiful woman on screen, was plagued by health problems for many years. Taylor's life had two worlds. She was a powerful actress who won an Academy Award for playing a call girl in "BUtterfield 8" in 1960, another for her portrayal of a foul-mouthed alcoholic in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in 1967, and earned Oscar nominations for "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Suddenly, Last Summer" and "Raintree County."
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During the past decade, Elizabeth battled a host of health problems and was confined to a wheelchair and tended to round-the-clock nurses. She suffered brain tumor, skin cancer, pneumonia and congestive heart failure she underwent three hip replacements. She was born with the debilitating was scoliosis, or curvature of the spine and in an 2004 interview joked: "My body's a real mess....I've become one of those poor little women who's bent sideways. I feel so stupid and feeble that I can't do the work I was meant to do because of my bloody body." She is believed to have suffered from Alzheimer's disease and reportedly underwent emergency surgery to fix a leaky heart valve recently. A private funeral is planned for this week. The London-born actress married for the first time at age 18 in 1950 to Conrad Hilton, the hotel baron who is great-uncle of the socialite sisters Paris and Nicky, but they split after a year. In 1952, she married Michael Wilding and the couple had two sons during a five-year relationship. After a one-year of marriage with film producer Mike Todd, she married singer Eddie Fisher who was the best man at her wedding to Mike and was also married Debbie Reynolds. Elizabeth was branded a homewrecker, but she said “I’m not taking anything away from Debbie Reynolds because she never really had it.” Ding! After allegedly jumping off on the set of Cleopatra with Richard Burton 1963, Elizabeth soon divorced Mike and married Richard. They were married for 10 years, divorced in 1974, remarried in the following year and divorced for good in 1976. She had two more husbands — the politician John W Warner, to whom she was married between 1976 and 1982, and the former truck driver Larry Fortensky, 20 years her junior, whom she had met when they were both attending a treatment center for drink and drug abuse. They married in 1991 (when she had just turned 60) at a ranch owned by her close friend Michael Jackson, and divorced in 1996. “I’m not marrying again,” she vowed. “I promise.”

This is one of her last interviews. She's asked that very question about marriage.



Too soon?


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