Elizabeth Taylor

  1. Taylor was married 8 times. Her shortest marriage was with her first husband Conrad Nicky Hilton which lasted just 9 months, and her longest marriage was with Richard Burton which lasted 10 years (plus an extra year when they re-married in 1975).
  2. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starred together in 11 movies.
  3. She landed her first movie role aged just 9 years old in There’s One Born Every Minute (1942)
  4. Her nickname on-set was “One-Shot Liz” (referring to her ability to shoot a scene in one take).
  5. The partnership of Taylor and Burton was incredibly powerful. By 1967 their films had earned the movie industry $200 million. There was a panic later amongst movie execs that year when they considered taking a 3 month break from working as “nearly half of the U.S. film industry’s income” came from movies starring one or both of them.
  6. Mike Todd’s death ended Taylor’s only marriage not to result in divorce. Although her relationship with her 3rd husband was stormy, she later called him one of the three loves of her life, along with Burton and jewelry.
  7. During the filming of Cleopatra when Burton and Taylor were having a torrid affair (whist both being married to other people), they were condemned by the Vatican for “erotic vagrancy”.
  8. Elizabeth Taylor became a grandmother aged just 39.
  9. Taylor’s passion for expensive jewelry was legendary. When she died her jewelry collection was reportedly worth $150 million.
  10. Elizabeth Taylor had an unlucky time of things medically and came close to dying multiple times.  She broke her back five times, had both her hips replaced, had an emergency tracheotomy, and a hysterectomy as well as surviving dysentery, phlebitis, a punctured esophagus, a benign brain tumor, skin cancer and pneumonia and yet she still lived to be 79!

Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor

Image source and copyright: 1, 2,This work is in the public domain in that it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.