Academy Award for Best Actress

1966

Elizabeth Taylor

as

Martha

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American 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 as much for her acting ability as for her glamorous lifestyle, beauty, and distinctive dark blue eyes, which famously appeared to be violet.

Taylor's screen debut was in the film National Velvet (1944) at the age of 12, as her career grew she would later go on to star in such films as 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) for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama . She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for BUtterfield 8 (1960), played the title role in Cleopatra (1963), and famously married her co-star Richard Burton leaving her husband of five years Eddie Fisher for him. They appeared together in 11 films, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which Taylor won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress and her second Academy Award for Best Actress. From the mid-1970s, she appeared less frequently in film, and made occasional appearances in television and theater.

Her much-publicized personal life consisted of eight marriages, seven husbands (she married Burton twice) and several life-threatening illnesses throughout her extraordinary career. 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 1991. 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 female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Taylor died from congestive heart failure in March 2011 at the age of 79, having suffered many years of ill health.