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Elizabeth Taylor ‘Paid’ for Her Career ‘Luck’ With ‘Broken Marriages’ and ‘Disasters’
Actress Elizabeth Taylor appeared to have it all amid her booming career, but her personal life was riddled with tragedies.
“Everything was handed to me. Looks, fame, wealth, honors, love,” the Cleopatra actress previously said about her life. “But I’ve paid for that luck with disasters, terrible illnesses, destructive addictions, broken marriages.”
The London-born actress was married eight times to seven men — Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr., Michael Wilding, Mike Todd, Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton, John Warner and Larry Fortensky.
One theory about her various relationships falling apart is that she was “trying to be something other than Elizabeth Taylor” during her marriages, Kate Andersen Brower, author of the new biography Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon, told Closer Weekly, which is on newsstands now.
“I get the sense that she was very lonely,” Brower explained. “She didn’t have many friends her age.”
Taylor spent a lot of her life navigating complicated relationships. After her engagement to her sweetheart Bill Pawley ended when she was a teenager, hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton set his sights on Taylor.
“She was pushed into that marriage by her parents because he was from a wealthy family,” said Brower, noting that the marriage was bad from the start. “He was an abusive alcoholic who kicked her and she had a miscarriage.”
Their marriage lasted from 1950 to 1951, and Taylor made no qualms about their rocky relationship. “When I married Nick, I fell off my pink cloud with a thud,” the Little Women actress previously said.
Taylor, who admitted she had an “Irish temper,” called her second husband, Michael Wilding, “blasé and unruffled” because of his even demeanor. The pair were not very compatible and split in 1957 after less than five years of marriage. They shared two sons, Michael Jr. and Christopher.
Her third husband, Mike Todd, seemed to be a much better match, but he tragically died in a plane crash in 1958, one year after they wed. They have one child together, daughter Liza.
“He definitely showered her with attention and gifts — everything she craved,” Brower said about husband No. 3. However, the author wasn’t sure if their marriage would have the longevity if he had not died, as the film producer wanted her to give up her career and stay at home. “I don’t think she would have been happy at home.”
She went on to marry four other men, marrying Richard Burton, with whom she shares daughter Maria, twice in 1964 and 1975 before ultimately divorcing in 1976. She was married to her seventh husband, construction worker Larry Fortensky, when she died in 2016 at the age of 79.
Taylor reflected on the fame she experienced at a young age and how that impacted her life. “I was so totally chaperoned that I never had a moment alone to ever think or be silent just by myself,” she recalled.
That being said, she had moments when she questioned her path. “There’s a letter in my book where she tells her mother she wants to quit,” Brower explained, adding that pressure began when Taylor starred in 1944’s National Velvet. “Elizabeth’s mother told her that her hands looked fat in a scene. So to be scrutinized like that since the age of 12 was very hard.”
