Taylor, Elizabeth, 1932–2011, Anglo-American film actress, b. London. Regarded as one of the world's most beautiful women, Taylor went from child star and typical teenager roles to a series of ladylike roles and finally to playing worldly, sometimes shrewish women. She appeared in more than 50 films, and won Academy Awards for her work in Butterfield 8 (1960) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Her other films include National Velvet (1944), A Place in the Sun (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Cleopatra (1963), and The Mirror Crack'd (1979). She also had leading roles on Broadway in The Little Foxes (1981) and Private Lives (1983). Taylor was married nine times, twice to Richard Burton, with whom she co-starred in many films. She was active in raising money for AIDS research, and was made a Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire, in 2000.
See her autobiography (1965); biographies by C. D. Heymann (1995) and D. Spoto (1995); study by M. G. Lord (2012).
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