The most famous woman in the world

The death of Elizabeth Taylor at 79 marks the passing of a fine actor, a tireless campaigner, style icon and a woman with an impressive list of marriages – but it also marks the end of one of Hollywood's true celebrities, writes DONALD CLARKE

THE MOST famous woman in the world has just died. In 2011, when micro-celebrities achieve renown for bad nose jobs alone, this sounds somewhat like hyperbole. But, for several decades – long after her films made serious money – Elizabeth Taylor could comfortably claim that title. Her numerous marriages, eccentric friendships, countless health worries and campaigns for good causes always attracted attention.

Anybody old enough to remember the coverage of her colourful relationship with Richard Burton, to whom she was twice married, will snort with derision at the gossip surrounding that comparatively bourgeois liaison between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. You might as well compare a Greek epic to a Twitter feed.

The surrounding chatter sometimes obscured the fact that she was a terrific actor. In later years, she received a reputation as being something of a ham. This was unfair. Discomfited, like so many stars, by the method-acting boom in the 1950s and the studied informality of the 1960s, Taylor was from that generation who favoured the grand theatrical gesture – she saw no need to temper her performances with anything so vulgar as everyday reality.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Mike Nichols's durable version of the acerbic Edward Albee play, profited immeasurably from her talent for creative hysteria. Nobody else would have had the regal presence to carry off Cleopatra(not even Cleopatra herself, one suspects).

Elizabeth Taylor was born in 1932 in Hampstead, north London, to American parents and her voice carried traces of that English heritage throughout her life. In 1939, as hostilities loomed, the family moved to Hollywood. The young Elizabeth immediately attracted attention and, in 1942, just 10-years-old, she made her film debut in There's One Born Every Minute. Greater fame followed with Lassie Come Homeand National Velvet.

This writer’s grandfather, a robust farmer from Armagh, made his first ever trip to the cinema to see that last film. “Bloody nonsense,” he said, as Elizabeth, dressed as a boy, won the Grand National on her stallion. The fact that, highly uncharacteristically, he was dripping with tears as he spoke, revealed Taylor had got to him.

She was an odd sort of child star. Nicely spoken, her hair always ordered, she came across as a tiny adult who had somehow been cast into an adolescent world. It was, thus, not altogether surprising that she so comfortably made the jump into grown-up cinema.

Her first great adult performance came in 1951 in Vincente Minnelli's delightful comedy Father of the Bride. A year later, she appeared as an unattainable heiress opposite distressed Montgomery Clift in George Stevens's A Place in the Sun. It is said that, following Clift's near-fatal 1956 car crash, Taylor was first on the scene and plucked a broken tooth from his mouth. Her friendship with Clift marked the beginning of a happy association with the homosexual community that eventually led to her becoming a gay icon. Later, alongside other charity work, she proved a tireless campaigner for Aids issues.

Further acclaim greeted her turn as another spoilt brat in Stevens's Giant(1956). By then, having divorced hotel magnate Conrad Hilton in 1951 and married actor Michael Wilding in 1952, she had developed a wedding addiction with which only Zsa Zsa Gabor could compete.

In the late 1950s, her status as an icon – a symbol of Hollywood’s regal status – began to overtake her reputation as an actor. Stars, muddying up after the advance of Clift and Marlon Brando, were becoming less glamorous. The industry needed her violet eyes and extravagant dress sense.

When she was offered the role of Cleopatra, she joked that she would do it if she received $1 million and 10 per cent of the gross. To her own surprise the studio acquiesced to her half-serious demands. Released in 1963, the resulting epic, famously a financial catastrophe, firmed-up the Taylor legend. She met Burton and began that tumultuous relationship.

IT IS TO HER GREAT credit that she was always happy to indulge in self-deprecation. In 1961, recovering from a fever that required a tracheotomy, she won an Oscar for her performance as a prostitute in the ill-remembered Butterfield 8. Aware she was being honoured for not dying, she described the film as "a piece of shit".

By the mid 1960s, with the film world further loosening up, Taylor fans could have been forgiven for thinking that the fabulous, ridiculous Cleopatrahad killed off her career as a serious actor. But Mike Nichols knew better. Her turn, in 1966, opposite Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?was a masterpiece of unreasonableness. The Oscar she received was, on this occasion, well-deserved.

Taylor – still not yet 40, remember – should then have found endless roles as an angry middle-aged lady. But Hollywood didn't know what to do with her. Aside from anything else, her dazzling celebrity made it increasingly hard for her to effectively play a believable human being. It is a sad fact that, looking through her films from the 1970s, the only ones worth watching are those that retain camp value. A Little Night Music, Hammersmith is Outand Ash Wednesdaywere all savaged by the press and ignored at the box office.

But Taylor remained untouchably famous. She may not have been making great films, but, by golly, she was wearing great jewellery. In 1968, Burton bought her a 33-carat diamond that cost in the region of $300,000. In the grim economic climate of the 1970s, the relationship between Burton and Taylor became, a decade before Dallas, the world's favourite soap opera. What then? Well, a few more marriages, a number of worrying illnesses, including a benign brain tumour. She made friends with Michael Jackson and supported him during his sex abuse trial. Acting roles now usually involved stunt appearances such as in The Flintstonesmovie, the soap opera General Hospitaland (inevitably and delightfully) The Simpsons.Throughout it all, inspired by her friendship with Rock Hudson, she continued to work hard for Aids charities.

In truth, Elizabeth Taylor probably requires a collection of obituaries: one as an actor, one as a campaigner, one as a style icon, one as a marriage addict, one as an unclassifiable force of nature.

She was once the most famous woman in the world. Now the nature of celebrity has splintered – Balkanised by jabbering social network garbage – nobody will ever be quite so famous again.

I do, I do, I do: Liz's many marriages

1. Conrad 'Nicky' Hilton (1950-51)

This great-uncle of socialite Paris Hilton and heir to the Conrad hotel chain became Taylor's first husband after the starlet had dated a string of men including Howard Hughes. Their honeymoon on board the Queen Mary reportedly opened Taylor's eyes to her new husband's womanising, drinking and gambling. They divorced within a year.

2. Michael Wilding (1952-1957)

British-born actor Wilding was 30 years Taylor's senior and is thought to have provided a stabilising force after the tumultuous Hilton marriage. She had two sons with Wilding, Michael and Christopher, before their divorce.

3. Michael Todd (1957-1958)

Her second divorce was only three days old when Taylor married Todd, a producer of movies such as Around the World in 80 Days. Taylor was already pregnant with their daughter Liza when the marriage took place. The only one of her eight marriages not to end in divorce, Todd died in a plane crash just over a year after they were married. The name of the plane was The Lucky Liz.

4. Eddie Fisher (1959-1964)

Pop idol Fisher was best man at Todd and Taylor's wedding and was already married to movie star Debbie Reynolds when he became involved with Taylor. Reynolds was America's sweetheart, and Taylor received her first real negative press when she married Fisher in the same month he divorced Reynolds. Later when Reynolds was interviewed about the relationship she said she understood being dumped for "the most beautiful woman in the world".

5 6. Richard Burton

(1964-1974 and 1974-1976)

Taylor was still married to Fisher when she began an affair with Welsh movie legend Richard Burton on the set of Cleopatra. Observing the chemistry between them was like being "locked in a room with two tigers", said Cleopatra director Joseph Mankiewicz. They adopted a daughter, Maria, and the famously stormy marriage fuelled by drinking and diamonds lasted a decade, a record for Taylor. They married again 16 months later, before divorcing for good two years after that.

7. John William Warner (1976-1982)

Warner whisked Taylor from the showbiz world to the political arena when they married in 1976. She described the period after he became a Republican Senator when she lived in his Virginia ranch as one of the loneliest of her life: "I felt I'd become redundant," she wrote. "I ate and drank with abandon. The large amounts of food I ate were a substitute for everything I felt was lacking in my life. But what was really starving was my self-esteem, and all the food in the world couldn't bolster it."

8. Larry Fortensky (1991-1996)

Taylor's eighth and final marriage was to Larry Fortensky, a mullet-haired construction worker she met while getting treatment for substance abuse. The extravagant bash took place at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch where Jackson, who remained a close friend of Taylor's until his death, gave her away. Fortensky was 20 years younger than Taylor and though the world sniggered at the unlikely match, the marriage still lasted five years before ending, as all but one of her other marriages had, in divorce.

- RÓISÍN INGLE