With the permission of the family, the journalist Kate Andersen Brower interviewed the people closest to the late actress and had access to personal material from the Hollywood legend

On March 23, 2011, one of the last great movie stars died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles: Elizabeth Taylor. She was 79 years old. After seven decades in the world of cinema and more than 50 films behind her, Taylor was not only the leading actress in unforgettable productions such as Cleopatra or Suddenly, Last Summer, but she was also a woman who drew everyone’s attention. world for her private life: she had seven husbands and eight marriages. In addition, she was addicted to alcohol and drugs.

In the first authorized biography of the artist, Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamor of an Icon, which has just been released in the United States, journalist Kate Andersen Brower offers unprecedented information on this woman who dazzled on the big screen.

With the go-ahead from the family to explore the actress’ archives and personal material (including 7,358 letters and notes) and interviews with 250 of Taylor’s closest loved ones and other acquaintances, the author sought to document the life of the legendary star talking to the people who knew her best off set.

Demi Moore, Carol Burnett and Colin Farrell, were some of the personalities who agreed to give her testimony for the book. The four children of the actress and even some of Liz’s former loves, such as George Hamilton, Robert Wagner and her last husband, Senator John Warner, who died in May 2021, also allowed the journalist to inquire about Taylor’s past.

With the statements of those close to her and Taylor’s files, the writer was able to tell the story of an actress who struggled against addiction, who was a victim of abuse or who was an advocate for AIDS patients in the 1980s.

“She said her whole life had been a struggle,” explains Brower. “Her resilience of hers was refusing to be a victim. Once her father beat him up, and she hit him because she felt intimidated because her 12-year-old daughter earned more money as a child star than she did, ”the writer details.

“They reconciled when she was 20 years old, but the fact is that she did not allow herself to be victimized. But she got up again, like when she almost died at age 20 because she had pneumonia, and she went on and on. She was one of never giving up, ”she adds in her book.

“To be able to go through her life, read her inner thoughts and find out how she was working psychologically on the things that were happening to her all the time. And also how empathic she was with other people, how she fought to be a working mother of four, she fought for love… I think there was much more to her than we could see,” Brower said in an interview with People magazine. .

The book also reveals a flirtation with the director David Lynch, which happened at the party after the Oscars in 1987, where they shared a kiss: “I leaned in slowly, getting closer to his lips, but mesmerized by these violet eyes,” recalls the director. “I saw those eyes close as we kissed and then mine close. We enter a dream. I will never forget”.

Her addictions are another of the great revelations of the biography. Taylor opened up in numerous letters to various people about her struggle to overcome her addiction to her drugs. It is one of her children, Chris Wilding, the result of her marriage to the English actor Michael Wilding, who has spoken of some of the most dramatic episodes during the 1970s, when her mother was submerged on a medication called Demerol, which was administered intravenously: “Her son said that Elizabeth had a completely empty look while she handed him a syringe so that she could administer the dose,” explains the journalist in the interview with People. “There was always a void that she was trying to fill.”

“Elizabeth said that her whole life was like a fight,” reveals Brower.

He also refers to episodes of abuse that she suffered from her partners; one of her most violent was her during her marriage to actor Eddie Fisher, her fourth husband, who pointed a gun at her temple. “Don’t worry, you’re too beautiful to kill yourself,” she told him. Elizabeth recounted that being married to him was “like slow suicide,” Brower explains, “so she needed to go. She got out of these abusive situations throughout her entire life, but I think the thing about her is that she always thought she was better off when she was married.”

According to the journalist, the actress’s children have thanked her for her work, although they have acknowledged that they have found episodes difficult to digest, “but they have also learned things from their mother by reading it, because her life spanned so much that no one was there to see it. all”.

A fascinating love story over the phone

Her biography also reveals more details about her affair with Irish actor Colin Farrell, 44 years her junior.

Although he does not like to talk about his loves and conquests, Farrell spoke about the platonic relationship he had with the legendary actress in the last days of his life.

The story -narrated by the actor- was like this. At the end of 2009, when she was in the Cedars Sinai hospital in Los Angeles because he had been the father of Henry, her second son, she learned that the legendary actress was hospitalized for a heart problem. She did not hesitate and she sent him a bouquet of flowers. He was convinced that the diva did not know him. But he was wrong. Liz returned his attention with another bouquet and a note written in her own handwriting. That’s how it all started.

After a brief meeting, the actor spoke to Taylor’s agent to request a private tour of the star’s home: “Elizabeth was intrigued,” Brewer writes. “Her Irish accent and her reputation as a nonconformist reminded her of her beloved Richard Burton.”

Their first meeting was at Taylor’s Bel Air mansion, where Farrell brought a copy of Yeats’s poetry as a gift. “She told him that if she ever wanted him to come back and read her poetry, he would be happy to oblige,” according to the biographer. Taylor then wrote to the actor: “What a pleasure it was to meet you…You remind me of so many good things…so many happy things. Thanks for being so real.”

“He went over and over again, reading to her,” Brewer says. “He would sit in an armchair next to her bed and she would occasionally put on recordings of Richard reading poetry.”

It may interest you: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the creation of destructive love

A decade later, in 2013, Farell revealed some details of this relationship during an interview. “That was the beginning of a year and a half or two of a very special relationship,” the interpreter confessed during his time on the Ellen DeGeneres show in 2018.

“She was a spectacular woman. For me it was, at least in my head, the last romantic relationship I ever had. Although it was never consummated, ”said the actor, who explained that both had long telephone conversations until late at night.

“We talked about everything. Poetry, food, travel… Not so much about cinema. To the despair of my friends, I never asked him about James Dean or Montgomery Clift. She didn’t sleep much at night, like me, so at two in the morning she would call her. She would sit me in my garden and we would chat for hours, ”said the Irish actor, who was 34 years old at the time.

“I loved her, I still do, and I was lucky enough to be her friend for the last two years of her life. It was a beautiful friendship that fell from heaven”, the actor said about the iconic Hollywood star. “I wanted to be husband number eight, but we ran out of time.”

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