“Elizabeth Taylor is, in my opinion, the greatest actress in film history. She instinctively understands the camera and its nonverbal intimacies. Opening her violet eyes, she takes us into the liquid realm of emotion, which she inhabits by Pisces intuition … an electric, erotic charge vibrates the space between her face and the lens. It is an extraordinary, pagan phenomenon … Elizabeth Taylor, voluptuous in her sleek slip, stands like an ivory goddess, triumphantly alone.”
/ From fiery pop culture theorist and author Camille Paglia’s essay “Elizabeth Taylor: Hollywood’s Pagan Queen” in the March 1992 issue of Penthouse magazine /
Born 94 years ago today: child actress turned volatile, hedonistic screen diva, AIDS activist, perfume brand magnate and definition of “movie star”, Elizabeth Taylor (Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, 27 February 1932 – 23 March 2011). My favourite Taylor performances would have to include Suddenly Last Summer (1959) and Boom! (1968) (she was truly one of cinema’s definitive interpreters of Tennessee Williams’ dialogue: see also Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1989)), the gloriously trashy Butterfield 8 (1960), the underrated Southern Gothic Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and the brilliantly bizarre Secret Ceremony (1968) and The Driver’s Seat (1974) aka Identikit. Compulsory reading: Erotic Vagrancy: Everything About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (2023) by Roger Lewis. Pictured: exquisite portrait of Taylor by Mark Shaw, 1956.
