Edward Albee
Edward Albee, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1961.
Born	(1928-03-12) 12 March 1928 (age 84) Virginia
Occupation	Dramatist
Nationality	American
Period	1958 – present
Notable work(s)	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Zoo Story The American Dream The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?
Notable award(s)	Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1967 1975 1994) Tony Award (1963 2002) National Medal of Arts (1996) Special Tony Award (2005)
Influences Theatre of the Absurd
Influenced Paula Vogel

Edward Franklin Albee III ( /ˈɔːlbiː/ AWL-bee; born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and a rewrite of the book for the unsuccessful musical version of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1966). His works are considered well-crafted, often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Albee continues to experiment in new works, such as The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia? (2002).

Biography[link]

Edward Albee at the 1987 Miami Book Fair International.

According to Magill's Survey of American Literature (2007), Edward Albee was born somewhere in Virginia (the popular belief is that he was born in Washington, D.C.). He was adopted two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York in Westchester County, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters. Here the young Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre as a child. His adoptive mother, Reed's third wife, Frances tried to raise Albee to fit into their social circles.

Albee attended the Clinton High School, then the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, from which he was expelled. He then was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where he was dismissed in less than a year. He enrolled at The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, graduating in 1946. His formal education continued at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was expelled in 1947 for skipping classes and refusing to attend compulsory chapel. In response to his expulsion, Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is believed to be based on his experiences at Trinity College.^{[citation needed]}

Albee left home for good when he was in his late teens. In a later interview, he said: "I never felt comfortable with the adoptive parents. I don't think they knew how to be parents. I probably didn't know how to be a son, either."^[1] More recently, he told interviewer Charlie Rose that he was "thrown out" because his parents wanted him to become a "corporate thug" and didn't approve of his aspirations to become a writer.^[2]

Albee moved into New York's Greenwich Village, where he supported himself with odd jobs while learning to write plays. His first play, The Zoo Story, was first staged in Berlin. The less than diligent student later dedicated much of his time to promoting American university theatre. He currently is a distinguished professor at the University of Houston, where he teaches an exclusive playwriting course. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service^[3] and Samuel French, Inc..

Edward Albee

Albee is openly gay and states that he first knew he was gay at age 12 and a half.^[4] He has insisted, however, that he does not want to be known as a "gay writer," stating in his acceptance speech for the 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation's Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement: "A writer who happens to be gay or lesbian must be able to transcend self. I am not a gay writer. I am a writer who happens to be gay."^[5]

Albee's longtime partner, Jonathan Thomas, a sculptor, died on May 2, 2005, from bladder cancer.

Honors[link]

A member of the Dramatists Guild Council, Albee has received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama — for A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994). His play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was selected for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize by the award's drama jury, but was overruled by the advisory committee, which elected not to give a drama award at all. Albee was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972.^[6] He received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement (2005); the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1980); as well as the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts (both in 1996). In 2009 Albee received honorary degree a.k.a. "Doctor Honoris Causa" by the Bulgarian National Academy of Theater and Film Arts (NATFA) - a member of the Global Alliance of Theater Schools.

Albee is the President of the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc., which maintains the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center, a writers and artists colony in Montauk, New York.

In 2008, in celebration of Albee's eightieth birthday, a number of his plays were mounted in distinguished Off Broadway venues, including the historic Cherry Lane Theatre. The playwright directed two of his one-acts, The American Dream and The Sandbox there. These were first produced at the theater in 1961 and 1962, respectively.

Plays[link]

Edward Albee by Irish artist Reginald Gray (The New York Times, 1966).

Essays[link]

• Stretching My Mind: Essays 1960–2005 (Avalon Publishing, 2005)

Quotes[link]

This section is a candidate to be copied to Wikiquote using the Transwiki process.

• "What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?"
• "A usefully lived life is probably going to be, ultimately, more satisfying."^[7]
• "Writing should be useful. If it can't instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness there's no point in doing it."
• "If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly."
• "That's what happens in plays, yes? The shit hits the fan."
• "Creativity is magic. Don't examine it too closely."^[8]
• "Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly."
• "All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time."

Discography[link]

• Mark Richman & William Daniels in The Zoo Story by Edward Albee - Directed by Arthur Luce Klein (LP, Spoken Arts SA 808)

Awards and nominations[link]

Awards

• 1960 Drama Desk Award Vernon Rice Award - The Zoo Story
• 1963 Tony Award for Best Play - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Drama - A Delicate Balance
• 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Drama - Seascape
• 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Drama - Three Tall Women
• 1996 National Medal of Arts
• 2002 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play - The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?
• 2002 Tony Award for Best Play - The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?
• 2005 Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement
• 2005 Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
• 2008 Drama Desk Award Special Award
• 2011 Edward MacDowell Medal for Lifetime Achievement
• 2011 Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement, Lambda Literary Foundation

Nominations

• 1964 Tony Award for Best Play - The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
• 1965 Tony Award for Best Author of a Play - Tiny Alice
• 1965 Tony Award for Best Play - Tiny Alice
• 1967 Tony Award for Best Play - A Delicate Balance
• 1975 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play - Seascape
• 1975 Tony Award for Best Play - Seascape
• 1976 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• 1994 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Play - Three Tall Women
• 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama - The Play About the Baby
• 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama - The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?
• 2005 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The Pulitzer Prize committee for the Best Play in 1963 recommended Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but the Pulitzer board, who have sole discretion in awarding the prize, rejected the recommendation, due to the play's perceived vulgarity, and no award was given that year.^[9]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Edward Albee

Literature portal

• Edward F. Albee Foundation
• Edward Albee at the Internet Broadway Database
• Edward Albee at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Edward Albee at the Internet Movie Database
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Edward Albee on Charlie Rose
• Works by or about Edward Albee in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Edward Albee collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Edward Albee collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Guardian (UK) Profile of Edward Albee, The Guardian, 2004
• William Flanagan (Fall 1966). "Edward Albee, The Art of Theater No. 4". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/viewinterview.php/prmMID/4350. *"Interviews with Edward Albee", TonyAwards
• Notes on a Colloquy with Edward Albee, Artslynx
• Performance by Edward Albee, Long House Theatre
• Cherry Lane Theatre website
• "The Friars Club"
• Who's afraid of Edward Albee, Laura Parker, Intelligent Life, 2009
• Solomon, Rakesh H. Albee in Performance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
• Albee with Joe Cino at benefit for the Caffe Cino

Charlie Rose
Rose in May 2010
Born	Charles Peete Rose, Jr. (1942-01-05) January 5, 1942 (age 70) Henderson, North Carolina, U.S.
Education	Duke University B.A. (1964) Duke University J.D. (1968)
Occupation	Talk show host Journalist
Years active	1972–present
Notable credit(s)	Charlie Rose, 60 Minutes II, 60 Minutes, CBS News Nightwatch, CBS This Morning
Website
http://www.charlierose.com/

Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942)^[1] is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He has also co-anchored CBS This Morning since January 2012. Charlie, along with Lara Logan, has revamped the CBS classic Person to Person, a news program during which celebrities are interviewed in their homes, originally hosted by the legendary Edward R. Murrow.^[2]

Early life[link]

Rose was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child^[3] of Margaret Frazier and Charles Peete Rose, Sr., tobacco farmers who owned a country store.^[4][5] As a child, Rose lived above his parents' store in Henderson and helped out with the family business from age seven.^[6] Rose admitted in a Fresh Dialogues interview that as a child his insatiable curiosity was constantly getting him in trouble.^[7] A high school basketball star, Rose entered Duke University intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track, but an internship in the office of Democratic North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics.^[8] Rose graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. At Duke, he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968.^[6] He met his wife, Mary (née King), while attending Duke.^[3][4]

Career[link]

After his wife was hired by the BBC (in New York), Rose handled some assignments for the BBC on a freelance basis. In 1972, while continuing to work at Bankers Trust, he landed a job as a weekend reporter for WPIX-TV. His break came in 1974, after Bill Moyers hired Rose as managing editor for the PBS series Bill Moyers' International Report. In 1975, Moyers named Rose executive producer of Bill Moyers Journal. Rose soon began appearing on camera. "A Conversation with Jimmy Carter," one installment of Moyers's series U.S.A.: People and Politics, won a 1976 Peabody Award. Rose worked at several networks honing his interview skills until KXAS-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth hired him as program manager and gave him the late-night time slot that would become the Charlie Rose show.

Rose worked for CBS News (1984–1990) as the anchor of CBS News Nightwatch, the network's first late-night news broadcast. The Nightwatch broadcast of Rose's interview with Charles Manson won an Emmy Award in 1987.^[4] In 1990, Rose left CBS to serve as anchor of Personalities, a syndicated program produced by Fox Broadcasting Company, but he got out of his contract after six weeks because of the tabloid-style content of the show. Charlie Rose premiered on PBS station Thirteen/WNET on September 30, 1991, and has been nationally syndicated since January 1993. In 1994, Rose moved the show to a studio owned by Bloomberg Television, which allowed for improved satellite interviewing.^[9]

Rose was a correspondent for 60 Minutes II^[10] from its inception in January 1999 until its cancellation in September 2005, and was later named a correspondent on 60 Minutes.^[11]

Rose was a member of the board of directors of Citadel Broadcasting Corporation from 2003 to 2009.^[3] In May 2010, Charlie Rose delivered the commencement address at North Carolina State University.

On November 15, 2011, it was announced that Rose would return to CBS to help anchor CBS This Morning, replacing The Early Show, commencing January 9, 2012, along with co-anchors Erica Hill and Gayle King.

Cameo appearances[link]

Rose has appeared as himself in the 1998 film Primary Colors,^[12] in a 2000 episode of The Simpsons^[13] and in the 2008 movie Elegy.^[14] He and his show were also used in the Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. He also appears as himself in the 2011 George Clooney directed film, The Ides of March.

[edit] Accusations of conflict of interest

While hosting the 2002 Coca-Cola Company shareholders' meeting, Rose said "few companies are able to connect as completely with consumers in the way that Coca-Cola is. It is a privilege to be associated with [The Coca-Cola family] ... This is the business of Coca-Cola: being part of a family, being worldwide, doing well and doing good at the same time."^[15] Afterward, Coca-Cola agreed to become what Rose called "a leading underwriter" of The Charlie Rose Show, paying "six or possibly seven figures."^[16] Even the Charlie Rose mugs used on his PBS show feature a Coca-Cola logo on one side.^[17][18] Although CBS News policy bars correspondents from doing commercials and product endorsements, the Washington Post reported CBS was "comfortable" with Rose's actions. Rose insists he "would never do a story on 60 Minutes II about anybody who underwrites my PBS show."^[16]

[edit] Quiet influence

The New York Times reported that Rose encouraged a discussion between the leaders of NBC and Fox, that led eventually to a mutual reduction in ad hominem attacks between Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly on their respective news programs.^[19]

Rose has attended several Bilderberg Group conference meetings, including meetings held in the United States in 2008;^[20] Spain in 2010;^[21] and Switzerland in 2011.^[22] These unofficial conferences hold guests from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are political leaders and businessmen. Details of meetings are closed off to the public and strictly invitation-only, and critics^[who?] speculate the controversial nature of these meetings of highly influential people. Accusations from conspiracy theorists against The Charlie Rose show claim that it has become the US media outlet for Bilderberg.^{[23][unreliable source?]}

Personal life[link]

Rose's twelve-year marriage to Mary Rose (née King) ended in divorce in 1980. Mary is the sister-in-law of Morgan Stanley Chairman John J. Mack. Since 1993, his companion has been socialite and chairman of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the city department of planning Amanda Burden, a stepdaughter of CBS founder William S. Paley.^[24]

On March 29, 2006, after experiencing shortness of breath in Syria, Rose was flown to Paris and underwent surgery for mitral valve repair in the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital. His surgery was performed under the supervision of Alain F. Carpentier, a pioneer of the procedure.^[25] Rose returned to the air on June 12, 2006, with Bill Moyers and Yvette Vega (the show's executive producer), to discuss his surgery and recuperation.

In a 2009 Fresh Dialogues interview, Rose described his life as "great and glorious."^[7] He added, '"I get up every morning with a new adventure. The adventure is fueled by interesting people. I get a chance to control my own destiny. I do something that is immediately either appreciated or not. I get feedback."

Rose owns a 575-acre (2.33 km²) farm in Oxford, North Carolina, an apartment overlooking Central Park in New York City, a beach house in Bellport, New York, an apartment in Washington D.C.^[3] and an apartment in Paris, France.

References[link]

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (March 2012)

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (March 2012)

• Charlie Rose Official website of his eponymous show
• Charlie Rose official channel on YouTube
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Charlie Rose at the Internet Movie Database
• Charlie Rose collected news and commentary at the Los Angeles Times
• Charlie Rose collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Charlie Rose at the Notable Names Database
• Charlie Rose shows on Hulu
• celebritynetworth.com, Celebrity Net Worth, Charlie Rose
• Why Business Loves Charlie Rose David A. Kaplan, Fortune, September 28, 2009

Neal Marshad (born on April 25, 1952) is an American film and television producer, director, cinematographer, Internet strategist, and designer.

Personal life[link]

He was born on April 25, 1952 in Peekskill, New York and grew up in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Starting in 1971, Neal attended New York University, Tisch School of the Arts for Film and TV.

Career Timeline[link]

After graduating New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1974, Marshad produced and photographed films for NBC’s Saturday Night Live over a 20 year period, starting in 1978.

In 1982, Marshad won his first Emmy award for outstanding achievement in directing and cinematography for his work for CBS Sports’ coverage of Super Bowl XVI ^[1]

In 1983, Marshad formed Neal Marshad Productions, as an entity to produce television shows and corporate television programs.

In 1989, Marshad produced and directed the film The Conspiracy of Silence with actress Kathleen Turner.^[2]

In 1993, while working for IBM Latin America, creating a film about making the Vatican Library accessible online, Marshad pioneered streaming video on the internet, and was first to stream a video on a BBC’s website in 1995.

In 1996, Marshad formed Marshad Technology Group and was hired by clients including Chanel, Neiman Marcus, La Prairie,^[3] and the BBC to strategize their internet businesses. In the same year, he was commissioned by Speedo, the swimwear manufacturer, to create and launch Speedo.com.^[4] He was the first to enable email communication between Olympic athletes and sports fans online. This was for the Olympics Summer games in Atlanta, Georgia.

Neal Marshad was director of photography (videographer) for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education interviews in West Hampton, New York. Under the direction of Steven Spielberg, the Foundation has collected the permanent testimony of over 52,000 holocaust survivors, liberators, rescuers, and war crimes trial participants.

Marshad collaborated with playwright Edward Albee to create videos of his performances at the Jack Lenor Larsen sculpture garden at Longhouse Reserve, East Hampton, New York in 1999.^[5]

Marshad is currently an executive producer for EuroCinema, the Video-On-Demand television network available specializing in European box office films that is in 30 million United States homes.^[6]

Marshad was hired in November 2010 by Iron Chef America Cat Cora to design her new website CatCora.com.^[7]

In August 2011 Neal Marshad signed an agreement with the Apollo Theater to exclusively develop, joint venture and produce musical and comedy shows and events as filmed entertainment specifically designed for online streaming to worldwide audiences.

External links[link]

1. http://www.marshad.com
2. http://caudalie-usa.com/
3. Marshad Technology Group/Neal Marshad Productions' Facebook Page
4. NYT.com Style Section article

Notes[link]

1. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439836/
2. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420561/
3. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/19971222044748/http://laprairie.com/
4. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/19961227104843/http://www.speedo.com/
5. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437417/
6. ^ http://www.eurocinema.com/advisorsconsultants.php/
7. ^ http://www.catcora.com/

Virginia Woolf
Born	Adeline Virginia Stephen 25 January 1882(1882-01-25) Kensington, London, England, UK
Died	28 March 1941(1941-03-28) (aged 59) River Ouse, near Lewes, East Sussex, England
Occupation	Novelist, Essayist, Publisher, Critic
Notable work(s)	To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando: A Biography, A Room of One's Own
Spouse(s)	Leonard Woolf (1912–1941)
Influences William Shakespeare, George Eliot, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Anton Chekhov, Emily Bronte, Daniel Defoe, James Joyce, E. M. Forster

Adeline Virginia Woolf (pronounced /ˈwʊlf/; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Early life[link]

Photographic portrait of Julia Stephen, mother of Woolf, by Julia Margaret Cameron, Julia's aunt

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London in 1882 to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson).

Virginia's father, Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), was a notable historian, author, critic and mountaineer.^[1] He was the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, a work that would influence Woolf's later experimental biographies.

Virginia's mother Julia Stephen (1846–1895) was a renowned beauty, born in India to Dr. John and Maria Pattle Jackson. She was also the niece of Julia Margaret Cameron née Pattle, the famous photographer. Julia moved to England with her mother, where she served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones.^[2]

Woolf was educated by her parents in their literate and well-connected household at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington. Her parents had each been married previously and been widowed, and, consequently, the household contained the children of three marriages. Julia had three children by her first husband, Herbert Duckworth: George, Stella, and Gerald Duckworth. Leslie first married Harriet Marian (Minny) Thackeray (1840–1875), the daughter of William Thackeray, and they had one daughter: Laura Makepeace Stephen, who was declared mentally disabled and lived with the family until she was institutionalised in 1891.^[3] Leslie and Julia had four children together: Vanessa Stephen (1879), Thoby Stephen (1880), Virginia (1882), and Adrian Stephen (1883).

Sir Leslie Stephen's eminence as an editor, critic, and biographer, and his connection to William Thackeray, meant that his children were raised in an environment filled with the influences of Victorian literary society. Henry James, George Henry Lewes, and her honorary godfather, James Russell Lowell, were among the visitors to the house. Julia Stephen was equally well connected. Descended from an attendant of Marie Antoinette,^{[citation needed]} she came from a family of beauties who left their mark on Victorian society as models for Pre-Raphaelite artists and early photographers, including her aunt Julia Margaret Cameron who was also a visitor to the Stephen household. Supplementing these influences was the immense library at the Stephens' house, from which Virginia and Vanessa were taught the classics and English literature. Unlike the girls, their brothers Adrian and Julian (Thoby) were formally educated and sent to Cambridge, a difference which Virginia would resent. The sisters did, however, benefit indirectly from their brothers' Cambridge contacts, as the boys brought their new intellectual friends home to the Stephens' drawing room.^{[citation needed]}

Julia Prinsep Stephen portrayed by Edward Burne-Jones, 1866

According to Woolf's memoirs, her most vivid childhood memories were not of London but of St. Ives in Cornwall, where the family spent every summer until 1895. The Stephens' summer home, Talland House, looked out over Porthminster Bay, and is still standing today, though somewhat altered. Memories of these family holidays and impressions of the landscape, especially the Godrevy Lighthouse, informed the fiction Woolf wrote in later years, most notably To the Lighthouse.

The sudden death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was 13, and that of her half-sister Stella two years later, led to the first of Virginia's several nervous breakdowns. She was, however, able to take courses of study (some at degree level) in Greek, Latin, German and history at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London between 1897 and 1901, and this brought her into contact with some of the early reformers of women’s higher education such as Clara Pater, George Warr and Lilian Faithfull (Principal of the King’s Ladies’ Department and noted as one of the Steamboat ladies).^[4] Her sister Vanessa also studied Latin, Italian, art and architecture at King’s Ladies’ Department.

The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she was briefly institutionalised.^[3] Modern scholars (including her nephew and biographer, Quentin Bell) have suggested^[5] her breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods were also influenced by the sexual abuse to which she and her sister Vanessa were subjected by their half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth (which Woolf recalls in her autobiographical essays A Sketch of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate).

Throughout her life, Woolf was plagued by periodic mood swings and associated illnesses. Though this instability often affected her social life, her literary productivity continued with few breaks throughout her life.

Bloomsbury[link]

The Dreadnought Hoaxers in Abyssinian regalia; Virginia Woolf is the bearded figure on the far left

After the death of their father and Virginia's second nervous breakdown, Vanessa and Adrian sold 22 Hyde Park Gate and bought a house at 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury.

Woolf came to know Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Rupert Brooke, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, and Roger Fry, who together formed the nucleus of the intellectual circle of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group. Several members of the group attained notoriety in 1910 with the Dreadnought hoax, which Virginia participated in disguised as a male Abyssinian royal. Her complete 1940 talk on the Hoax was discovered and is published in the memoirs collected in the expanded edition of The Platform of Time (2008). In 1907 Vanessa married Clive Bell, and the couple's interest in avant garde art would have an important influence on Woolf's development as an author.^[6]

Virginia Stephen married writer Leonard Woolf on the 10th August, 1912.^[7] Despite his low material status (Woolf referring to Leonard during their engagement as a "penniless Jew") the couple shared a close bond. Indeed, in 1937, Woolf wrote in her diary: "Love-making – after 25 years can’t bear to be separate ... you see it is enormous pleasure being wanted: a wife. And our marriage so complete." The two also collaborated professionally, in 1917 founding the Hogarth Press, which subsequently published Virginia's novels along with works by T.S. Eliot, Laurens van der Post, and others.^[8] The Press also commissioned works by contemporary artists, including Dora Carrington and Vanessa Bell.

A portrait of Woolf by Roger Fry c. 1917

The ethos of the Bloomsbury group encouraged a liberal approach to sexuality, and in 1922 she met the writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West, wife of Harold Nicolson. After a tentative start, they began a sexual relationship, which, according to Sackville- West, was only twice consummated.^[9] In 1928, Woolf presented Sackville-West with Orlando, a fantastical biography in which the eponymous hero's life spans three centuries and both genders. Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West's son, wrote "The effect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando, the longest and most charming love letter in literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries, tosses her from one sex to the other, plays with her, dresses her in furs, lace and emeralds, teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her".^[10] After their affair ended, the two women remained friends until Woolf's death in 1941. Virginia Woolf also remained close to her surviving siblings, Adrian and Vanessa; Thoby had died of an illness at the age of 26.

Work[link]

Woolf began writing professionally in 1900, initially for the Times Literary Supplement with a journalistic piece about Haworth, home of the Brontë family.^[11] Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915 by her half-brother's imprint, Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd. This novel was originally entitled Melymbrosia, but Woolf repeatedly changed the draft. An earlier version of The Voyage Out has been reconstructed by Woolf scholar Louise DeSalvo and is now available to the public under the intended title. DeSalvo argues that many of the changes Woolf made in the text were in response to changes in her own life.^[12]

Lytton Strachey and Woolf at Garsington, 1923.^[13]

Woolf went on to publish novels and essays as a public intellectual to both critical and popular success. Much of her work was self-published through the Hogarth Press. She has been hailed as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century and one of the foremost modernists.^[14]

Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. In her works she experimented with stream-of-consciousness and the underlying psychological as well as emotional motives of characters. Woolf's reputation declined sharply after World War II, but her eminence was re-established with the surge of Feminist criticism in the 1970s.^[15]

Woolf's work was criticised for epitomising the narrow world of the upper-middle class English intelligentsia. Some critics judged it to be lacking in universality and depth,^{[citation needed]} without the power to communicate anything of emotional or ethical relevance to the disillusioned common reader,^{[citation needed]} weary of the 1920s aesthetes. She was also criticised by some as an anti-Semite, despite her being happily married to a Jewish man. This anti-semitism is drawn from the fact that she often wrote of Jewish characters in stereotypical archetypes and generalisations, including describing some of her Jewish characters as physically repulsive and dirty.^[16] The overwhelming and rising 1920s and 30s anti-Semitism possibly influenced Virginia Woolf. She wrote in her diary: "I do not like the Jewish voice; I do not like the Jewish laugh." However, in a 1930 letter to the composer Ethel Smyth, quoted in Nigel Nicolson's biography Virginia Woolf, she recollects her boasts of Leonard's Jewishness confirming her snobbish tendencies, "How I hated marrying a Jew- What a snob I was, for they have immense vitality."^[17] In another letter to her dear friend Ethel Smyth, Virginia gives a scathing denunciation of Christianity, seeing it as self-righteous "egotism" and stating "my Jew has more religion in one toe nail—more human love, in one hair."^[18] Virginia and her husband Leonard Woolf actually hated and feared 1930s fascism with its anti-semitism knowing they were on Hitler's blacklist. Her 1938 book Three Guineas was an indictment of fascism.^[19]

Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure her central strength: Woolf is arguably the major lyrical novelist in the English language. Her novels are highly experimental: a narrative, frequently uneventful and commonplace, is refracted—and sometimes almost dissolved—in the characters' receptive consciousness. Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions.^[19]

The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings – often wartime environments – of most of her novels. For example, Mrs Dalloway (1925) centres on the efforts of Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged society woman, to organise a party, even as her life is paralleled with that of Septimus Warren Smith, a working-class veteran who has returned from the First World War bearing deep psychological scars.^[20]

To the Lighthouse (1927) is set on two days ten years apart. The plot centres on the Ramsay family's anticipation of and reflection upon a visit to a lighthouse and the connected familial tensions. One of the primary themes of the novel is the struggle in the creative process that beset painter Lily Briscoe while she struggles to paint in the midst of the family drama. The novel is also a meditation upon the lives of a nation's inhabitants in the midst of war, and of the people left behind. It also explores the passage of time, and how women are forced by society to allow men to take emotional strength from them.^[21]

Orlando (1928) is one of Virginia Woolf's lightest novels. A parodic biography of a young nobleman who lives for three centuries without aging much past thirty (but who does abruptly turn into a woman), the book is in part a portrait of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West. It was meant to console Vita for the loss of her ancestral home, though it is also a satirical treatment of Vita and her work. In Orlando the techniques of historical biographers are being ridiculed; the character of a pompous biographer is being assumed in order for it to be mocked.^[22]

The Waves (1931) presents a group of six friends whose reflections, which are closer to recitatives than to interior monologues proper, create a wave-like atmosphere that is more akin to a prose poem than to a plot-centered novel.^[23]

"Flush: A Biography" (1933) is a part-fiction, part-biography of the cocker spaniel owned by Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The book is written from the dog's point of view. Woolf was inspired to write this book from the success of the Rudolf Besier play, The Barretts of Wimpole Street. In the play, Flush is on stage for much of the action. The play was produced for the first time in 1932 by actress Katharine Cornell.

Her last work, Between the Acts (1941), sums up and magnifies Woolf's chief preoccupations: the transformation of life through art, sexual ambivalence, and meditation on the themes of flux of time and life, presented simultaneously as corrosion and rejuvenation—all set in a highly imaginative and symbolic narrative encompassing almost all of English history. This book is the most lyrical of all her works, not only in feeling but in style, being chiefly written in verse.^[24] While Woolf's work can be understood as consistently in dialogue with Bloomsbury, particularly its tendency (informed by G. E. Moore, among others) towards doctrinaire rationalism, it is not a simple recapitulation of the coterie's ideals.^[25]

Woolf's works have been translated into over 50 languages, by writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Marguerite Yourcenar.

Death[link]

After completing the manuscript of her last (posthumously published) novel, Between the Acts, Woolf fell into a depression similar to that which she had earlier experienced. The onset of World War II, the destruction of her London home during the Blitz, and the cool reception given to her biography of her late friend Roger Fry all worsened her condition until she was unable to work.^[13] On 28 March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse near her home and drowned herself. Woolf's body was not found until 18 April 1941.^[26] Her husband buried her cremated remains under an elm in the garden of Monk's House, their home in Rodmell, Sussex.

In her last note to her husband she wrote:

Modern scholarship and interpretations[link]

Recently, studies of Virginia Woolf have focused on feminist and lesbian themes in her work, such as in the 1997 collection of critical essays, Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings, edited by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. Controversially, Louise A. DeSalvo reads most of Woolf's life and career through the lens of the incestuous sexual abuse Woolf suffered as a young woman in her 1989 book Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and Work.

Woolf's fiction is also studied for its insight into shell shock, war, class and modern British society. Her best-known nonfiction works, A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938), examine the difficulties female writers and intellectuals face because men hold disproportionate legal and economic power and the future of women in education and society. In The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir counts, of all women who ever lived, only three female writers—Emily Brontë, Woolf and "sometimes" Katherine Mansfield—who have explored "the given".^[28]

Irene Coates's book Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf: A Case for the Sanity of Virginia Woolf holds that Leonard Woolf's treatment of his wife encouraged her ill health and ultimately was responsible for her death. This is not accepted by Leonard's family but is extensively researched and fills in some of the gaps in the traditional account of Virginia Woolf's life. Victoria Glendinning's book Leonard Woolf: A Biography, which is even more extensively researched and supported by contemporaneous writings, argues that Leonard Woolf was not only supportive of his wife but enabled her to live as long as she did by providing her with the life and atmosphere she needed to live and write. Virginia's own diaries support this view of the Woolfs' marriage.^[29]

Though at least one biography of Virginia Woolf appeared in her lifetime, the first authoritative study of her life was published in 1972 by her nephew Quentin Bell.

In 1992, Thomas Caramagno published the book The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf's Art and Manic-Depressive Illness.

Hermione Lee's 1996 biography Virginia Woolf provides a thorough and authoritative examination of Woolf's life and work.

In 2001 Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska edited The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Julia Briggs's Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, published in 2005, is the most recent examination of Woolf's life. It focuses on Woolf's writing, including her novels and her commentary on the creative process, to illuminate her life. Thomas Szasz's book My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf (ISBN 0-7658-0321-6) was published in 2006.

Rita Martin’s play Flores no me pongan (2006) considers Woolf's last minutes of life in order to debate polemical issues such as bisexuality, Jewishness and war. Written in Spanish, the play was performed in Miami under the direction of actress Miriam Bermudez.

Depictions[link]

Woolf's bust in Tavistock Square, London erected in 2004

Michael Cunningham's 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours focused on three generations of women affected by Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. In 2002, a film version of the novel was released starring Nicole Kidman as Woolf, a role for which she won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Actress. The film also starred Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep and featured an award-winning score by American composer Philip Glass. Susan Sellers' novel Vanessa and Virginia (2008) explores the close sibling relationship between Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell. It was adapted for the stage by Elizabeth Wright in 2010 and first performed by Moving Stories Theatre Company.

Bibliography[link]

Novels[link]

• The Voyage Out (1915)
• Night and Day (1919)
• Jacob's Room (1922)
• Mrs Dalloway (1925)
• To the Lighthouse (1927)
• Orlando (1928)
• The Waves (1931)
• The Years (1937)
• Between the Acts (1941)

Short story collections[link]

• Monday or Tuesday (1921)
• A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (1944)
• Mrs Dalloway's Party (1973)
• The Complete Shorter Fiction (1985)

"Biographies"[link]

Virginia Woolf published three books to which she gave the subtitle "A Biography":

• Orlando: A Biography (1928, usually characterised as a novel inspired by the life of Vita Sackville-West)
• Flush: A Biography (1933, more explicitly cross-genre: fiction as "stream of consciousness" tale by Flush, a dog; non-fiction in the sense of telling the story of the owner of the dog, Elizabeth Barrett Browning), reprinted in 2005 by Persephone Books
• Roger Fry: A Biography (1940, usually characterised as non-fiction, however: "[Woolf's] novelistic skills worked against her talent as a biographer, for her impressionistic observations jostled uncomfortably with the simultaneous need to marshal a multitude of facts."^[30])

Non-fiction books[link]

• Modern Fiction (1919)
• The Common Reader (1925)
• A Room of One's Own (1929)
• On Being Ill (1930)
• The London Scene (1931)
• The Common Reader: Second Series (1932)
• Three Guineas (1938)
• The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)
• The Moment and Other Essays (1947)
• The Captain's Death Bed And Other Essays (1950)
• Granite and Rainbow (1958)
• Books and Portraits (1978)
• Women And Writing (1979)
• Collected Essays (four volumes)

Drama[link]

• Freshwater: A Comedy (performed in 1923, revised in 1935, and published in 1976)

Autobiographical writings and diaries[link]

• A Writer’s Diary (1953) – Extracts from the complete diary
• Moments of Being (1976)
• A Moment's Liberty: the shorter diary (1990)
• The Diary of Virginia Woolf (five volumes) – Diary of Virginia Woolf from 1915 to 1941
• Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897–1909 (1990)
• Travels With Virginia Woolf (1993) – Greek travel diary of Virginia Woolf, edited by Jan Morris
• The Platform of Time: Memoirs of Family and Friends, Expanded Edition, edited by S. P. Rosenbaum (London, Hesperus, 2008)

Letters[link]

• Congenial Spirits: The Selected Letters (1993)
• The Letters of Virginia Woolf 1888–1941 (six volumes, 1975–1980)
• Paper Darts: The Illustrated Letters of Virginia Woolf (1991)

Prefaces, contributions[link]

• Selections Autobiographical and Imaginative from the Works of George Gissing ed. Alfred C. Gissing, with an introduction by Virginia Woolf (London & New York, 1929)

Photograph albums[link]

• Monk's House photograph album 1, 1863-1938. Digital Facsimile at Houghton Library, Harvard University
• Monk's House photograph album 2, 1909-1922. Digital Facsimile at Houghton Library, Harvard University
• Monk's House photograph album 3, 1890-1933. Digital Facsimile at Houghton Library, Harvard University
• Monk's House photograph album 4, 1890-1947. Digital Facsimile at Houghton Library, Harvard University
• Monk's House photograph album 5, 1892-1938. Digital Facsimile at Houghton Library, Harvard University
• Monk's House photograph album 6, 1850-1900. Digital Facsimile at Houghton Library, Harvard University

Biographies[link]

• Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson. New York, Penguin Group. 2000
• Virginia Woolf: A Biography by Quentin Bell. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972; Revised editions 1990, 1996
• "Vanessa and Virginia" by Susan Sellers (Two Ravens, 2008; Harcourt 2009) [Fictional biography of Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell]
• The Unknown Virginia Woolf by Roger Poole. Cambridge University Press, 1978.
• The Invisible Presence: Virginia Woolf and the Mother-Daughter Relationship by Ellen Bayuk Rosenman. Louisiana State University Press, 1986.
• Virginia Woolf and the politics of style, by Pamela J. Transue. SUNY Press, 1986. ISBN 0887062865.
• The Victorian heritage of Virginia Woolf: the external world in her novels, by Janis M. Paul. Pilgrim Books, 1987. ISBN 0937664731.
• Virginia Woolf's To the lighthouse, by Harold Bloom. Chelsea House, 1988. ISBN 1555460348.
• Virginia Woolf: the frames of art and life, by C. Ruth Miller. Macmillan, 1988. ISBN 0333448804.
• Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work by Louise DeSalvo. Boston: Little Brown, 1989.
• A Virginia Woolf Chronology by Edward Bishop. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1989.
• A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf by Jane Dunn. Boston: Little, Brown, 1990
• Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life by Lyndall Gordon. New York: Norton, 1984; 1991.
• Virginia Woolf and war, by Mark Hussey. Syracuse University Press, 1991. ISBN 0815625375.
• The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf's Art and Manic-Depressive Illness by Thomas D. Caramago. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
• Virginia Woolf by James King. NY: W. W. Norton, 1994.
• Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf by Panthea Reid. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee. New York: Knopf, 1997.
• Granite and Rainbow: The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf by Mitchell Leaska. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
• The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf, by Jane Goldman. Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0521794587.
• Virginia Woolf and the nineteenth-century domestic novel, by Emily Blair. SUNY Press, 2002. ISBN 0791471195.
• Virginia Woolf: becoming a writer, by Katherine Dalsimer. Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0300092083.
• Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman by Ruth Gruber. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005
• My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf by Thomas Szasz, 2006
• Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, by Julia Briggs. Harcourt, 2006. ISBN 0156032295.
• The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury by Sarah M. Hall, Continuum Publishing, 2007
• Virginia Woolf and the Visible World, by Emily Dalgarno. Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 0521033608.
• A Life of One's Own: A Guide to Better Living through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf by Ilana Simons, New York: Penguin Press, 2007.
• Sudden Endings: 13 Profiles in Depth of Famous Suicides by M. J. Meaker, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964, pp. 250–269: "The Fatal Game: Virginia Woolf".

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Virginia Woolf

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Virginia Woolf

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Virginia Woolf

Literature portal

• Archival material relating to Virginia Woolf listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• Works by Virginia Woolf at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Virginia Woolf in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Biography of Virginia Woolf on the Yale Modernism Lab
• Listen to Virginia Woolf's BBC Broadcast (29 April 1937) 'Words Fail Me'
• Rare recordings of Virginia Woolf, Conan Doyle, and others
• Monk's House information at the National Trust
• The Virginia Woolf Collection at the Victoria University Library Special Collections
• The Legacy, full text and audio file
• The Searchlight, full text and audio file
• Virginia Woolf, works with facsimiles at wikilivres.info

Elizabeth Taylor
Studio publicity photo This file is nominated for deletion. See commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Taylor, Elizabeth posed.jpg
Born	Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor February 27, 1932(1932-02-27) Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, England
Died	March 23, 2011(2011-03-23) (aged 79) Los Angeles, California, United States
Cause of death	Congestive heart failure
Resting place	Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California
Nationality	British-American
Other names	Liz Taylor
Occupation	Actress, social activist
Years active	1942–2003
Religion	Christian Science (1932–59) Judaism (1959–2011)[1]
Spouse	Conrad Hilton, Jr. (1950–51; divorced) Michael Wilding (1952–57; divorced) Mike Todd (1957–58; widow) Eddie Fisher (1959–64; divorced) Richard Burton (1964–74, 1975–76; married and divorced twice) John Warner (1976–82; divorced) Larry Fortensky (1991–96; divorced)
Children	Michael Howard Wilding Christopher Edward Wilding Elizabeth Frances "Liza" Todd Burton Maria Burton
Parents	Francis Lenn Taylor (deceased) Sara Sothern (deceased)
Relatives	Howard Taylor (older brother)
Awards	List

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American^[2] actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age. As one of the world's most famous film stars, Taylor was recognized for her acting ability and for her glamorous lifestyle, beauty and distinctive violet eyes.

National Velvet (1944) was Taylor's first success, and she starred in Father of the Bride (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for BUtterfield 8 (1960), played the title role in Cleopatra (1963), and married her co-star Richard Burton. They appeared together in 11 films, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which Taylor won a second Academy Award. From the mid-1970s, she appeared less frequently in film, and made occasional appearances in television and theatre.

Her much publicized personal life included eight marriages and several life-threatening illnesses. From the mid-1980s, Taylor championed HIV and AIDS programs; she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985, and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1993. She received the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Legion of Honour, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, who named her seventh on their list of the "Greatest American Screen Legends". Taylor died of congestive heart failure in March 2011 at the age of 79, having suffered many years of ill health.

Early life[link]

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born at Heathwood, her parents' home at 8 Wildwood Road in Hampstead Garden Suburb,^[3][4][5] a northwestern suburb of London; the younger of two children of Francis Lenn Taylor (1897–1968) and Sara Sothern (née Sara Viola Warmbrodt;^[6] 1895–1994), who were Americans residing in England. Taylor's older brother, Howard Taylor, was born in 1929.^[7] Her parents were originally from Arkansas City, Kansas. Francis Taylor was an art dealer, and Sara was a former actress whose stage name was "Sara Sothern". Sothern retired from the stage in 1926 when she married Francis in New York City. Taylor's two first names are in honor of her paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Mary (Rosemond) Taylor.

Colonel Victor Cazalet, one of their closest friends, had an important influence on the family. He was a rich, well-connected bachelor, a Member of Parliament and close friend of Winston Churchill. Cazalet loved both art and theater and was passionate when encouraging the Taylor family to think of England as their permanent home. Additionally, as a Christian Scientist and lay preacher, his links with the family were spiritual. He also became Elizabeth's godfather. In one instance, when she was suffering with a severe infection as a child, she was kept in her bed for weeks. She "begged" for his company: "Mother, please call Victor and ask him to come and sit with me."^[8]:14

Biographer Alexander Walker suggests that Elizabeth's conversion to Judaism at the age of 27 and her life-long support for Israel, may have been influenced by views she heard at home. Walker notes that Cazalet actively campaigned for a Jewish homeland, and her mother also worked in various charities, which included sponsoring fundraisers for Zionism. Her mother recalls the influence that Cazalet had on Elizabeth:

Victor sat on the bed and held Elizabeth in his arms and talked to her about God. Her great dark eyes searched his face, drinking in every word, believing and understanding.^[8]:14

A dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, she was born British, through her birth on British soil and an American citizen through her parents. She reportedly sought, in 1965, to renounce her United States citizenship, to wit: "Though never accepted by the State Department, Elizabeth renounced in 1965. Attempting to shield much of her European income from U.S. taxes, Elizabeth wished to become solely a British citizen. According to news reports at the time, officials denied her request when she failed to complete the renunciation oath, refusing to say that she renounced "all allegiance to the United States of America."^[9]

At the age of three, Taylor began taking ballet lessons. Shortly before the beginning of World War II, her parents decided to return to the United States to avoid hostilities. Her mother took the children first, arriving in New York in April 1939,^[10] while her father remained in London to wrap up matters in his art business, arriving in November.^[11] They settled in Los Angeles, California, where her father established a new art gallery, which included many paintings he shipped from England. The gallery would soon attract numerous Hollywood celebrities who appreciated its modern European paintings. According to Walker, the gallery "opened many doors for the Taylors, leading them directly into the society of money and prestige" within Hollywood's movie colony.^[8]:27

Acting career[link]

Child actress[link]

Soon after settling in Los Angeles, Taylor's mother discovered that Hollywood people "habitually saw a movie future for every pretty face." Some of her mother's friends, and even total strangers, urged her to have Taylor screen tested for the role of Bonnie Blue, Scarlett's child in Gone with the Wind, then being filmed. Her mother refused the idea, as a child actress in film was alien to her. And in any regard, they would return to England after the war.^[8]:28

As a child actress, circa 1942

Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper introduced the Taylors to Andrea Berens, the fiancée of John Cheever Cowdin, chairman and major stockholder of Universal Pictures. Berens insisted that Sara take Taylor to see Cowden who, she assured, would be dazzled by her breathtaking beauty.^[12] Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer also became interested in Taylor, and MGM head Louis B. Mayer reportedly told his producer, "Sign her up, sign her up! What are you waiting for?" As a result, she soon had both Universal and MGM willing to place her under contract. When Universal learned that MGM was equally interested, however, Cowden telephoned Universal from New York: "Sign her up, he ordered, don't even wait for the screen test." Universal then gave her a seven-year contract.^[8]:31

Taylor appeared in her first motion picture at the age of nine in There's One Born Every Minute (1942), her only film for Universal.^[13] After less than a year, however, the studio fired Taylor for unknown reasons. Some speculate that she did not live up to Cowden's promise. Walker believes that Taylor's intuition told her "she wasn't really welcome at Universal." She learned, for instance, that her casting director complained, "The kid has nothing," after a test. Even her beautiful eyes—they were a deep blue that appeared violet^[14][15] and stunned those who met her in person,^[16] with a mutation that gave Taylor double eyelashes^[7][15]—did not impress him: "Her eyes are too old, she doesn't have the face of a child," he said.^[8]:32 But Walker admits that "this was not so far off the mark as it may appear now." He explains:

There was something slightly odd about Elizabeth's looks, even at this age – an expression that sometimes made people think she was older than she was. She already had her mother's air of concentration. Later on, it would prove an invaluable asset. At the time, it disconcerted people who compared her unfavorably with Shirley Temple's cute bubbling innocence or Judy Garland's plainer and more vulnerable juvenile appeal.^[8]:32

Taylor herself remembers that when she was a child in England, adults used to describe her as having an "old soul," because, as she says, "I was totally direct."^[17] She also recognized similar traits in her baby daughter:

I saw my daughter as a baby, before she was a year old, look at people, steadily, with those eyes of hers, and see people start to fidget, and drop things out of their pockets and finally, unable to stand the heat, get out of the room.^[17]

The now classic Jane Eyre (1943 film), starring Orson Wells and Joan Fontaine is a notable early film in which Taylor played Helen Burns. The 20th Centrury Fox film was released in the UK in December 1943. There are a number of on set and off set stills at IMDb.com.Isthisuseful 16:55, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Taylor's father served as an air raid warden with MGM producer Sam Marx, and learned that the studio was searching for an English actress for a Lassie film. Taylor received the role and was offered a long-term contract at the beginning of 1943.^[18] She chose MGM because "the people there had been nicer to her when she went to audition," Taylor recalled.^[8]:32 MGM's production chief, Benny Thau, was to remain the "only MGM executive" she fully trusted during subsequent years, because, writes Walker, "he had, out of kindly habit, made the gesture that showed her she was loved."^[8]:32 Thau remembered her as a "little dark-haired beauty...[with] those strange and lovely eyes that gave the face its central focus, oddly powerful in someone so young."^[8]:34 MGM, in addition, was considered a "glamorous studio," boasting that it had "more stars than there are in heaven." Before Taylor's mother would sign the contract, however, she sought certainty that Taylor had a "God-given talent" to become an actress. Walker describes how they came to a decision:

[Mrs. Taylor] wanted a final sign of revelation...Was there a divine plan for her? Mrs. Taylor took her old script for The Fool, in which she had played the scene of the girl whose faith is answered by a miracle cure. Now she asked Elizabeth to read her own part, while she read the lines of the leading man. She confessed to weeping openly. She said, 'There sat my daughter playing perfectly the part of the child as I, a grown woman, had tried to do it. It seemed that she must have been in my head all those years I was acting'.^[8]:38–39

Adolescent star[link]

MGM cast Taylor in Lassie Come Home (1943) with child star Roddy McDowall, with whom she would share a lifelong friendship. He later recalled regarding her beauty, "who has double eyelashes except a girl who was absolutely born to be on the big screen?"^[7] The film received favorable attention for both actors, and MGM signed Taylor to a conventional seven-year contract starting at $100 a week and with regular raises. Her first assignment under her new contract was a loan-out to 20th Century Fox for the character of Helen Burns in a film version of the Charlotte Brontë novel Jane Eyre (1944). Taylor returned to England to appear in another McDowall picture for MGM, The White Cliffs of Dover (1944).

Taylor's persistence in seeking the role of Velvet Brown in MGM's National Velvet made her a star at the age of 12. Her character is a young girl who trains her beloved horse to win the Grand National. Velvet, which costarred fellow young actor Mickey Rooney and English newcomer Angela Lansbury, became a great success upon its release in December 1944. Many years later Taylor called it "the most exciting film" she had ever made,^[6] although the film caused many of her later back problems due to her falling off a horse during filming.^[18]

Viewers and critics "fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor when they saw her in it." Walker explains why the film was popular:

Its enormous popularity rubs off on to its heroine because she expresses, with the strength of an obsession, the aspirations of people—people who have never seen a girl on horseback, or maybe even a horse race for that matter—who believe that anything is possible...A philosophy of life, in other words...a film which...has acquired the status of a generational classic...^[8]:41

Velvet grossed over US$4 million and MGM signed Taylor to a new long-term contract. Because of the movie's success she was cast in another animal film, Courage of Lassie (1946), in which Bill the dog outsmarts the Nazis. The film's success led to another contract for Taylor paying her $750 per week. Her roles as Mary Skinner in a loan-out to Warner Brothers' Life With Father (1947), Cynthia Bishop in Cynthia (1947), Carol Pringle in A Date with Judy (1948), and Susan Prackett in Julia Misbehaves (1948) were all successful. Taylor received a reputation as a consistently successful adolescent actress, with a nickname of "One-Shot Liz" (referring to her ability to shoot a scene in one take) and a promising career. Taylor's portrayal of Amy in the American classic Little Women (1949) was her last adolescent role.

MGM studio provided schooling for its child stars with classrooms within the studio grounds. Taylor, however, came to dislike being cut off from typical schools with average students who were not treated like stars. She recalls her life before studio acting as a happier period in her childhood:

One of the few times I've ever really been happy in my life was when I was a kid before I started acting. With the other kids I'd make up games, play with dolls, pretend games. . . . As I got more famous—after National Velvet, when I was 12—I still wanted to be part of their lives, but I think in a way they began to regard me as a sort of an oddity, a freak.

I hated school—because it wasn't school. I wanted terribly to be with kids. On the set the teacher would take me by my ear and lead me into the schoolhouse. I would be infuriated; I was 16 and they weren't taking me seriously. Then after about 15 minutes I'd leave class to play a passionate love scene as Robert Taylor's wife.^[19]

Transition into adult roles[link]

Taylor with Spencer Tracy in a promotional image for Father of the Bride (1950).

The teenage Taylor was reluctant to continue making films. Her stage mother forced Taylor to relentlessly practice until she could cry on cue and watched her during filming, signaling to change her delivery or a mistake. Taylor met few others her age on movie sets, and was so poorly educated that she needed to use her fingers to do basic arithmetic. When at age 16 Taylor told her parents that she wanted to quit acting for a normal childhood, however, Sara Taylor told her that she was ungrateful: "You have a responsibility, Elizabeth. Not just to this family, but to the country now, the whole world".^[20]

In October 1948, Taylor sailed aboard the RMS Queen Mary to England to begin filming Conspirator. Unlike some other child actors, Taylor made an easy transition to adult roles.^[6] Before Conspirator's 1949 release, a TIME cover article called her "a jewel of great price, a true star sapphire", and the leader among Hollywood's next generation of stars such as Montgomery Clift, Kirk Douglas, and Ava Gardner.^[21] The petite Taylor had the figure of a mature woman, with a 19" waist.^[20] Conspirator failed at the box office, but 16-year-old Taylor's portrayal of a 21-year-old debutante who unknowingly marries a communist spy played by 38-year-old Robert Taylor, was praised by critics for her first adult lead in a film. Taylor's first picture under her new salary of $2,000 per week was The Big Hangover (1950), both a critical and box office failure, that paired her with screen idol Van Johnson. The picture also failed to present Taylor with an opportunity to exhibit her newly realized sensuality.

Her first box office success in an adult role came as Kay Banks in the comedy Father of the Bride (1950), alongside Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett. The film spawned a sequel, Father's Little Dividend (1951), which Taylor's costar Spencer Tracy summarized with "boring… boring… boring". The film did well at the box office, but it would be Taylor's next picture that would set the course for her career as a dramatic actress.

With Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951)

In late 1949, Taylor had begun filming George Stevens' A Place in the Sun. Upon its release in 1951, Taylor was hailed for her performance as Angela Vickers, a spoiled socialite who comes between George Eastman (Clift) and his poor, pregnant factory-working girlfriend Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters).^[6] The film, based on Theodore Dreiser's novel, An American Tragedy, was an indictment of "the American dream" and its corrupting influences, notes biographer Kitty Kelley.^[22]

Although Taylor, then only 17, was unaware of the psychological implications of the story and its powerful nuances, it became the pivotal performance of Taylor's career. Kelley explains that Stevens, its director, knew that with Elizabeth Taylor as the young and beautiful star, the "audience would understand why George Eastman (Clift) would kill for a place in the sun with her."^[22] Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper, allowed on the set to watch the filming, became "wide-eyed watching the little girl from National Velvet seduce Montgomery Clift in front of the camera," writes Kelley. When the scene was over, Hopper went to her, "Elizabeth, where on earth did you ever learn how to make love like that?"^[22]

Critics acclaimed the film as a classic, a reputation it sustained throughout the next 50 years of cinema history. The New York Times' A.H. Weiler wrote, "Elizabeth's delineation of the rich and beauteous Angela is the top effort of her career", and the Boxoffice reviewer unequivocally stated "Miss Taylor deserves an Academy Award".

Taylor became increasingly unsatisfied with the roles being offered to her at the time. While she wanted to play the lead roles in The Barefoot Contessa and I'll Cry Tomorrow, MGM continued to restrict her to mindless and somewhat forgettable films such as: a cameo as herself in Callaway Went Thataway (1951), Love Is Better Than Ever (1952), Ivanhoe (1952), The Girl Who Had Everything (1953) and Beau Brummel (1954).

Taylor's next screen endeavor, Rhapsody (1954), another tedious romantic drama, proved equally frustrating. Taylor portrayed Louise Durant, a beautiful rich girl in love with a temperamental violinist (Vittorio Gassman) and an earnest young pianist (John Ericson). A film critic for the New York Herald Tribune wrote: "There is beauty in the picture all right, with Miss Taylor glowing into the camera from every angle… but the dramatic pretenses are weak, despite the lofty sentences and handsome manikin poses."^{[citation needed]}

Taylor's fourth period picture, Beau Brummell, made just after Elephant Walk and Rhapsody, cast her as the elaborately costumed Lady Patricia, which many felt was only a screen prop—a ravishing beauty whose sole purpose was to lend romantic support to the film's title star, Stewart Granger. The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) fared only slightly better than her previous pictures, with Taylor being reunited with The Big Hangover costar Van Johnson. The role of Helen Ellsworth Willis was based on that of Zelda Fitzgerald and, although pregnant with her second child, Taylor went ahead with the film, her fourth in 12 months. Although proving somewhat successful at the box office, she still yearned for more substantial roles.^{[citation needed]}

1955–79[link]

Following a more substantial role opposite Rock Hudson and James Dean in George Stevens' epic Giant (1956), Taylor was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress four years in a row for Raintree County (1957)^[23] opposite Montgomery Clift; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)^[24] opposite Paul Newman; Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)^[25] with Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn and Mercedes McCambridge; and finally winning for BUtterfield 8 (1960).^[26] The film co-starred then husband Eddie Fisher^[6] and ended her contract, which Taylor said had made her an "MGM chattel" for 18 years.^[27]

Suddenly, Last Summer's success made Taylor among the top ten most successful actors at the box office, and she remained in the top ten almost every year for the next decade.^[27] In 1960, Taylor became the highest paid actress up to that time when she signed a $1 million dollar contract to play the title role in 20th Century Fox's lavish production of Cleopatra,^[25] which was released in 1963. During the filming, she began a romance with her future husband Richard Burton, who played Mark Antony in the film. The romance received much attention from the tabloid press, as both were married to other spouses at the time.^[28] Taylor ultimately received $7 million for her role.^[27]

Her second Academy Award, also for Best Actress in a Leading Role, was for her performance as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966),^[29] playing opposite then husband Richard Burton. The film was a turning point for both Taylor and Burton, as it was the "most exciting and daunting project either of them had ever contemplated," writes Walker. Taylor saw the film as her chance to act, "to really act," and a chance to emulate one of her favorite dramatic actresses, Vivien Leigh, who played roles as a "tragic heroine." For this part, however, Taylor worried that she did not look old enough, as her character was to be twenty years older. To compensate, she added gray hairs and transformed herself both physically and vocally: she intentionally gained weight, minimized makeup, and added excessive mascara to her eyes along with smudgy bags beneath them.^[8]:281-282

Taylor and Burton appeared together in six other films during the decade, among them The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), and The Taming of the Shrew (1967). By 1967 their films had earned $200 million at the box office. When Taylor and Burton considered not working for three months, the possibility caused alarm in Hollywood as "nearly half of the U.S. film industry's income" came from movies starring one or both of them. Their next films Doctor Faustus (1967), The Comedians (1967) and Boom! (1968), however, all failed at the box office.^[30]

Taylor appeared in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) opposite Marlon Brando (replacing Clift,^[31] who died before production began) and Secret Ceremony (1968) opposite Mia Farrow. By the end of the decade her box-office drawing power had considerably diminished, as evidenced by the failure of The Only Game in Town (1970), with Warren Beatty.^[32]

Although limited by a "thin and inflexible voice",^[27] Taylor continued to star in numerous theatrical films throughout the 1970s, such as Zee and Co. (1972) with Michael Caine, Ash Wednesday (1973), The Blue Bird (1976) with Jane Fonda and Ava Gardner, and A Little Night Music (1977). With then-husband Richard Burton, she co-starred in the 1972 films Under Milk Wood and Hammersmith Is Out, and the 1973 made-for-TV movie Divorce His, Divorce Hers.

1980–2003[link]

With Bob Hope, USO, 1986

Taylor starred in the 1980 mystery film The Mirror Crack'd, based on an Agatha Christie novel. In 1985, she played movie gossip columnist Louella Parsons in the TV film Malice in Wonderland opposite Jane Alexander, who played Hedda Hopper. Taylor appeared in the miniseries North and South. Her last theatrical film was 1994's The Flintstones.

In February 1996, she appeared on the TV program, The Nanny as herself, and the star of the show, Fran, identifies her to a friend by using all of her husbands' names, stating that she would be meeting "Elizabeth Taylor-Hilton-Wilding-Todd-Fisher-Burton-Burton-Warner-Fortensky." In 2001, she played an agent in the TV film These Old Broads. She appeared on a number of television series, including the soap operas General Hospital and All My Children, as well as the animated series The Simpsons—once as herself, and once as the voice of Maggie Simpson, uttering one word, "Daddy".

At the American Film Festival in Deauville, 1985

Taylor also acted on the stage, making her Broadway and West End debuts in 1982 with a revival of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. She was then in a production of Noël Coward's Private Lives (1983), in which she starred with her former husband, Richard Burton. The student-run Burton Taylor Theatre in Oxford was named for the famous couple after Burton appeared as Doctor Faustus in the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) production of the Marlowe play. Taylor played the ghostly, wordless Helen of Troy, who is entreated by Faustus to "make [him] immortal with a kiss".^{[citation needed]}

In the early 1980s, Taylor moved to Bel Air, Los Angeles, which was her residence until her death. She also owned homes in Palm Springs, London and Hawaii.

2003–11[link]

In March 2003, Taylor declined to attend the 75th Annual Academy Awards, due to her opposition to the Iraq War.^[33] She publicly condemned then President George W. Bush for calling on Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq, and said she feared the conflict would lead to "World War III".^[34]

The February 2007 issue of Interview magazine was devoted entirely to Taylor. It celebrated her life, career and her upcoming 75th birthday.

On December 1, 2007, Taylor acted on-stage again, appearing opposite James Earl Jones in a benefit performance of the A. R. Gurney play Love Letters. The event's goal was to raise $1 million for Taylor's AIDS foundation. Tickets for the show were priced at $2,500, and more than 500 people attended. The event happened to coincide with the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike and, rather than cross the picket line, Taylor requested a "one night dispensation." The Writers Guild agreed not to picket the Paramount Pictures lot that night to allow for the performance.^[35]

Personal life[link]

Marriages, romances, and children[link]

Taylor was married eight times to seven husbands. Taylor's husbands were:

• Conrad "Nicky" Hilton (May 6, 1950 – January 29, 1951): Taylor believed that she was in love with the young hotel heir, but also wanted to escape her mother. Hilton's "gambling, drinking, and abusive behavior",^[27] however, horrified her and her parents, caused a miscarriage, and ended the marriage in divorce after nine months.^[6][20]
• Michael Wilding (February 21, 1952 – January 26, 1957): The "gentle" Wilding, 20 years older than Taylor, comforted her after leaving Hilton.^[27][6] After their divorce Taylor admitted that "I gave him rather a rough time, sort of henpecked him and probably wasn't mature enough for him."^[20]

Taylor with daughter Liza and husband Mike Todd, 1957

• Michael Todd (February 2, 1957 – March 22, 1958): Todd's death ended Taylor's only marriage not to result in divorce. Although their relationship was tumultuous, she later called him one of the three loves of her life, along with Burton and jewelry.^[36][6]
• Eddie Fisher (May 12, 1959 – March 6, 1964): Fisher, Todd's best friend, consoled Taylor after Todd's death. They began an affair while Fisher was still married to Debbie Reynolds, causing a scandal;^[6][37]:226 Reynolds eventually forgave Taylor; she voted for her when Taylor was nominated for an Oscar for BUtterfield 8, and starred with her in These Old Broads.^[18]
• Richard Burton (March 15, 1964 – June 26, 1974): The Vatican condemned Burton and Taylor's affair, which began when both were married to others, as "erotic vagrancy".^[27] The press closely followed their relationship before, during, and after their ten years of marriage, due to great public interest in "the most famous film star in the world and the man many believed to be the finest classical actor of his generation." Taylor wanted to focus on her marriage rather than her career, and gained weight in an unsuccessful attempt to not receive film roles.^[6]
• Richard Burton (October 10, 1975 – July 29, 1976): Sixteen months after divorcing—Burton said, "You can't keep clapping a couple of sticks [of dynamite] together without expecting them to blow up"^[27]—they remarried in a private ceremony in Kasane, Botswana, but soon separated and redivorced in 1976.
• John Warner (December 4, 1976 – November 7, 1982): As with Burton, Taylor sought to be known as the wife of her husband, a Republican^[38][39][40] United States Senator from Virginia. Unhappy with her life in Washington,^[41] however, Taylor became depressed and entered the Betty Ford Clinic.^[6]
• Larry Fortensky (October 6, 1991 – October 31, 1996): Taylor and Fortensky met during another stay at the Betty Ford Clinic and were married at the Neverland Ranch.^[6]

Taylor had many romances outside her marriages. Before marrying Hilton she was engaged to both Heisman Trophy winner Glenn Davis—who did not know until the relationship ended that Taylor's mother had encouraged it to build publicity for her daughter^[20]—and the son of William D. Pawley, the United States Ambassador to Brazil.^[21] Howard Hughes promised Taylor's parents that if they would encourage her to marry him, the enormously wealthy industrialist and film producer would finance a movie studio for her; Sara Taylor agreed, but Taylor refused.^[20] After she left Hilton, Hughes returned, proposing to Taylor by suddenly landing a helicopter nearby and sprinkling diamonds on her.^[42] Other dates included Frank Sinatra, Henry Kissinger, and Malcolm Forbes.^[27] In 2007, Taylor denied rumors of a ninth marriage to her partner Jason Winters,^[43] but referred to him as "one of the most wonderful men I've ever known."^[44]

Taylor had two sons, Michael Howard (born January 6, 1953) and Christopher Edward (born February 27, 1955), with Michael Wilding. She had a daughter, Elizabeth Frances "Liza" (born August 6, 1957), with Michael Todd. During her marriage to Eddie Fisher, Taylor started proceedings to adopt a two-year-old girl from Germany, Maria (born August 1, 1961); the adoption process was finalized in 1964 following their divorce.^[45] Richard Burton later adopted Taylor's daughters Liza and Maria.^[46]

In 1971, Taylor became a grandmother at the age of 39. At the time of her death, she was survived by her four children, ten grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.^[47]

Religion and identity[link]

In 1959, at age 27, after nine months of study, Taylor converted from Christian Science to Judaism,^[48] taking the Hebrew name Elisheba Rachel. She stated that her conversion was something she had long considered and was not related to her marriages. After Mike Todd's death, Taylor said that she "felt a desperate need for a formalized religion," and explained that neither Catholicism nor Christian Science were able to address many of the "questions she had about life and death."^[7]:175

Biographer Randy Taraborrelli notes that after studying the philosophy of Judaism for nine months, "she felt an immediate connection to the faith."^[7]:176 Although Taylor rarely attended synagogue, she stated, "I'm one of those people who think you can be close to God anywhere, not just in a place designed for worship . . . "^[7]:176 At the conversion ceremony, with her parents present as witnesses and in full support of her decision, Taylor repeated the words of Ruth:

. . . for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God.^[7]:176

Taylor was a follower of Kabbalah and a member of the Kabbalah Centre.^[1]

During an interview when she was 55, she describes how her inner sense of identity, when a child actress, kept her from giving in to many of the studio's demands, especially with regard to altering her appearance to fit in:

God forbid you do anything individual or go against the fad. But I did. I figured this looks absurd. And I agreed with my dad: God must have had some reason for giving me bushy eyebrows and black hair. I guess I must have been pretty sure of my sense of identity. It was me. I accepted it all my life and I can't explain it. Because I've always been very aware of the inner me that has nothing to do with the physical me.^[17]

She adds that she began to recognize her "inner being" during her adulthood:

Eventually the inner you shapes the outer you, especially when you reach a certain age, and you have been given the same features as everybody else, God has arranged them in a certain way. But around 40 the inner you actually chisels your features. . . Life is to be embraced and enveloped. Surgeons and knives have nothing to do with it. It has to do with a connection with nature, God, your inner being—whatever you want to call it—it's being in contact with yourself and allowing yourself, allowing God, to mold you.^[17]

Her impressions of career and marriage[link]

When she was thirty-two, Taylor's opinions about herself as an actress became clearer, and she was able to describe it objectively: "The Elizabeth Taylor who's famous, the one on film, really has no depth or meaning to me. She's a totally superficial working thing, a commodity. She was also able to explain her acting skills as "minuscule—it's not technique. It's instinct and a certain ability to concentrate."^[19]

Although most of her film roles during the previous decade portrayed her beauty and sexuality, she claims they merely exaggerated or contradicted who she was in real life, stating, "I am not a 'sex queen' or a 'sex symbol.' I don't think I want to be one. . . If my husband thinks I'm sexy, that's good enough for me."^[19] She also implies that the reverse is also true:

I can tell you what I think is sexy in a man. It has to do with warmth, a personal givingness, not self-awareness. Richard [Burton] is a very sexy man. He's got that sort of jungle essence that one can sense. It's not the way he combs his hair, not the things he wears; he doesn't think about having muscles. It's what he says and thinks.^[19]

When Taylor was thirty-two, she was in her fifth marriage, to Richard Burton. Except for her third husband, Mike Todd, who died in a plane accident, she partly blames her young romances and divorces on her "puritanical upbringing and beliefs":

At first, I guess I didn't know what was love and what was not. I always chose to think I was in love and that love was synonymous with marriage. I couldn't just have a romance; it had to be a marriage. . . . When I was first divorced, I was 18 and I had only been married nine months. I was very naive and really totally crushed. It was the first divorce in my family.^[19]

Taylor credits Burton's strong relationship with their children as a factor in expecting their marriage to last, stating that he was the "absolute boss of the household and they respect him for that." In hindsight, however, she is surprised about how they became romantically involved in the first place, recalling one of their first meetings:

The first day I saw Richard on the Cleopatra set, there was a lot of hemming and hawing, and he said hello to Joe Mankiewicz and everyone. And then he sort of sidled over to me and said, "Has anybody ever told you that you're a very pretty girl?" I said to myself, oy gevaldt, here's the great lover, the great wit, the great intellectual of Wales, and he comes out with a line like that. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't wait to go back to the dressing room where all the girls were and tell them.^[19]

Jewelry, perfume and fashion[link]

Elizabeth Taylor in 1981, at a show celebrating her life.

Taylor had a passion for jewelry. At her death, Taylor's jewelry collection was reportedly worth $150 million.^[36][49]

Over the years she owned a number of well-known pieces, two of the most famous being the 33.19-carat (6.64 g) Krupp Diamond, which Taylor wore daily,^[27] and the 69.42-carat (13.88 g) pear-shaped Taylor-Burton Diamond; both were among many gifts from husband Richard Burton. Taylor also owned the 50-carat (10 g) La Peregrina Pearl, purchased by Burton as a Valentine's Day present in 1969, and formerly owned by Mary I of England.^[50][51] Her collection of jewelry has been documented in her book My Love Affair with Jewelry (2002).

Taylor was a fashion icon during her years as an active film star. In addition to her own purchases, MGM costumers Edith Head and Helen Rose helped Taylor choose clothes that emphasized her face, chest, and waist. Taylor helped popularize Valentino and Halston's designs,^[52] and in the 1980s Schering-Plough developed violet contact lenses, citing Taylor's eyes as inspiration.^[53]

Activism[link]

HIV/AIDS[link]

Taylor devoted consistent and generous humanitarian time, advocacy efforts, and funding to HIV and AIDS-related projects and charities, helping to raise more than $270 million for the cause. She was one of the first celebrities and public personalities to do so at a time when few acknowledged the disease, organizing and hosting the first AIDS fundraiser in 1984, to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles.^[27][54]

Taylor was cofounder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) with Dr. Michael Gottlieb and Dr. Mathilde Krim in 1985.^[54] Her longtime friend and former co-star Rock Hudson had disclosed having AIDS and died of it that year. She also founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) in 1993, created to provide critically needed support services for people with HIV/AIDS.^[54] For example, in 2006 Taylor commissioned a 37-foot (11 m) "Care Van" equipped with examination tables and xray equipment, the New Orleans donation made by her Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and Macy's.^[55][56] That year, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, she also donated US$40,000 to the NO/AIDS Task Force, a non-profit organization serving the community of those affected by HIV/AIDS in and around New Orleans.^[56]

Taylor was honored with a special Academy Award, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1992 for her HIV/AIDS humanitarian work. Speaking of that work, former President Bill Clinton said at her death, "Elizabeth's legacy will live on in many people around the world whose lives will be longer and better because of her work and the ongoing efforts of those she inspired."^[57]

Jewish causes[link]

After her conversion to Judaism, Taylor worked for Jewish causes throughout her life.^[58] In 1959, her large-scale purchase of Israeli Bonds caused Arab boycotts of her films.^[59] In 1962, she was barred from entering Egypt to complete Cleopatra; its government announced that "that Miss Taylor will not be allowed to come to Egypt because she has adopted the Jewish faith and 'supports Israeli causes.'" In 1974, Taylor and Richard Burton considered marrying in Israel, but could not because Burton was not Jewish.^[60] Taylor helped to raise money for organizations such as the Jewish National Fund; advocated for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel and canceled a visit to the USSR because of its condemnation of Israel due to the Six-Day War; signed a letter protesting the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 of 1975; and offered herself as a replacement hostage during the 1976 Entebbe skyjacking.^[59]

Illnesses and death[link]

Taylor struggled with health problems much of her life;^[61] starting with her divorce from Hilton, Taylor experienced serious medical issues whenever she faced problems in her personal life.^[20] Taylor was hospitalized more than 70 times^[27] and had at least 20 major operations.^[18] Many times newspaper headlines erroneously announced that Taylor was close to death;^[6] she herself only claimed to have almost died on four occasions.^[27]

At 5'4", Taylor constantly gained and lost significant amounts of weight, reaching both 119 pounds and 180 pounds in the 1980s.^[62][41] She smoked cigarettes into her mid-fifties,^[62] and feared she had lung cancer in October 1975 after an X-ray showed spots on her lungs, but was later found not to have the disease.^[63] Taylor broke her back five times, had both her hips replaced, had a hysterectomy, suffered from dysentery and phlebitis, punctured her esophagus, survived a benign brain tumor operation in 1997^[27][18] and skin cancer, and faced life-threatening bouts with pneumonia twice, one in 1961 requiring an emergency tracheotomy. In 1983 she admitted to having been addicted to sleeping pills and painkillers for 35 years.^[18] Taylor was treated for alcoholism and prescription drug addiction at the Betty Ford Clinic for seven weeks from December 1983 to January 1984,^[64] and again from the autumn of 1988 until early 1989.^[65]

On May 30, 2006, Taylor appeared on Larry King Live to refute the claims that she had been ill, and denied the allegations that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease and was close to death.^[66] Near the end of her life, however, she was reclusive and sometimes failed to make scheduled appearances due to illness or other personal reasons. She used a wheelchair and when asked about it stated that she had osteoporosis and was born with scoliosis.^[67]

The mutation that gave Taylor her striking double eyelashes may also have contributed to her history of heart trouble.^[15] In November 2004, Taylor announced a diagnosis of congestive heart failure, a progressive condition in which the heart is too weak to pump sufficient blood throughout the body, particularly to the lower extremities such as the ankles and feet. In 2009 she underwent cardiac surgery to replace a leaky valve.^[68] In February 2011, new symptoms related to heart failure caused her to be admitted into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for treatment,^[69] where she remained until her death at age 79 on March 23, 2011, surrounded by her four children.^[47][68]

She was buried in a private Jewish ceremony, presided over by Rabbi Jerry Cutler, the day after she died, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Taylor is entombed in the Great Mausoleum, where public access to her tomb is restricted.^[70] At her request, the funeral began 15 minutes after it was scheduled to begin; as her representative told the media "She even wanted to be late for her own funeral."^[71]

Legacy[link]

Taylor has been called the "greatest movie star of all," writes biographer William J. Mann.^[37]:2 A child star at the age of 12, she soon after launched into public awareness by MGM and a string of successful films, many of which are today considered "classics." Her resulting celebrity made her into a Hollywood icon, as she set the "gold standard" for Hollywood fame, and "created the model for stardom," adds Mann.^[37]:3

Other observers, such as social critic Camille Paglia, similarly describe Taylor as "the greatest actress in film history," partly as a result of the "liquid realm of emotion" she expressed on screen. Paglia describes the effect Taylor had in some of her films:

An electric, erotic charge vibrates the space between her face and the lens. It is an extrasensory, pagan phenomenon.^[37]:4

Taylor had a major role in sparking the sexual revolution of the 1960s, as she pushed the envelope on sexuality: She was one of the first major stars to pose (mostly) nude in Playboy, and among the first to remove her clothes onscreen.^[37]:5 In A Place in the Sun, filmed when she was 17, her surprising maturity shocked Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper, who wrote of her precocious sexuality. Film historian Andrew Sarris describes her love scenes in the film with Montgomery Clift as "unnerving—sybaritic—like gorging on chocolate sundaes."^[37]:6

In real life, she was considered "a star without airs," notes Mann. Writer Gloria Steinem likewise described her as a "movie queen with no ego . . . expert at what she does, uncatty in her work relationships with other actresses."^[37]:7 Mike Nichols, who directed her in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), said that of all the actors he’s worked with, Taylor had the "most democratic soul." Mann adds that she treated electricians and studio crew the "same way she would a Rothschild at a charity gala."^[37]:6 Director George Cukor told Taylor that she possessed "that rarest of virtues—simple kindness."^[37]:7

Awards and honors[link]

Taylor won two Academy Awards for Best Actress, for her performance in BUtterfield 8 in 1960, and for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966. Additionally, she received the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Academy Award in 1992 for her work fighting AIDS.

In 1997, Taylor was honored by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) with the Life Achievement Award.^[72] As Taylor could not be in attendance, Gregory Peck read the following statement on her behalf:

I’m so disappointed that I can’t be there with all of you tonight. Please know that I am watching. And this award is especially important to me because it’s given by my peers. Not only for my first career, acting – but, for what has now become my life, the eradication of the AIDS epidemic.

As we all know, ours was one of the first industries to be directly and dramatically affected by the AIDS epidemic. And it’s heartening to me that this community has risen to the challenge. And the foundation of the Screen Actors Guild, of which I’m so proud to be a member, is no exception having made a very generous donation to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. Thank you all for honoring me tonight.

Love, Elizabeth.^[72]

Taylor received the French Legion of Honour in 1987,^[18] and in 2000 was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.^[73] In 2001, she received a Presidential Citizens Medal for her humanitarian work, most notably for helping to raise more than $200 million for AIDS research and bringing international attention and resources to addressing the epidemic.^[72] Taylor was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2007.^[74]

Books[link]

Taylor was the subject of at least 53 books as of 2006;^[12] Kitty Kelley wrote the first unauthorized biography of the actress in 1981, which Taylor denounced. She never wrote a comprehensive autobiography due to her desire for privacy, but did publish several books besides My Love Affair with Jewelry. Taylor's first, Nibbles and Me (1946), discussed the child star's "adventures with her pet chipmunk". Reviewers criticized another, Elizabeth Taylor (1964), for being uninteresting and lacking in new information. She received a $750,000 advance payment for Elizabeth Takes Off: On Weight Gain, Weight Loss, Self-Image and Self-Esteem (1988).^[75]

Filmography[link]

Notes[link]