Elizabeth
The Biography of Elizabeth Taylor
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4.2 • 17 Ratings
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Elizabeth Taylor is known internationally as one of the most beautiful and talented women ever to grace the silver screen. She has won two Academy Awards and starred in over sixty films. She is just as well known for her tempestuous personal life, marrying eight times and suffering through innumerable health problems. A cultural icon, she has been written about before . . . but never like this.
This moving book traces for the first time Elizabeth's journey through the dark and often lonely world of a fame unparalleled in the 1960s and 1970s, a time during which alcohol and drugs played a major part in her life. It would be with her fifth (and sixth) husband Richard Burton (with whom she made twelve movies, including Cleopatra) that she would learn life lessons about love and loyalty that would inform the rest of her life and, finally, be the catalyst for her recovery from alcoholism in the 1980s. This book also details her philanthropic work as an AIDS activist in the 1990s as well as her stunning success as a business woman today (with a multi-million-dollar fragrance). Based on years of research, this is not just a star's biography . . . it's an unforgettable woman's story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ordinarily, readers might question the logic of a new tome on a celebrity who already has at least six full-length biographies (and four self-penned books) devoted to her life, but Elizabeth Taylor has never been ordinary. Readers will easily understand why tabloids have chronicled her escapades for six decades: her roller-coaster life could easily read like a high-sheen soap opera (the eight marriages, two Oscars, suicide attempts and innumerable life-threatening illnesses that led to years of alcohol and prescription drug addiction before she became the first celebrity to check into the Betty Ford Clinic). But Taraborrelli, a sympathetic biographer, rescues the subject by looking for psychological and emotional motives behind her actions. Taraborrelli can be overprotective of Taylor (he notes her reviews for Cleopatra were "so vicious that they are not even worth memorializing here") but more often, he's a superb storyteller who is also an enthusiastic fan. The book is a fitting tribute to a woman who has lived and loved with abandon but who found real passion and purpose when she embraced AIDS activism in 1985, helping to destigmatize the disease and creating her own AIDS foundation. Taraborrelli's chatty prose (and bite-size chapters) perfectly complement Taylor's glamorous life of highs and lows to create an irresistible and inspiring tale. Photos not seen by PW.
