Happy Birthday Elizabeth Taylor

 To me Elizabeth Taylor is and always has been the most beautiful woman in the world.  Her later humanitarian work has shown that her soul is also beautiful.  I wish her a very Happy 79th Birthday.  Text below from Wilipaedia.


Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE (born 27 February 1932), also known as Liz Taylor, is an English/American actress.^[1] A former child star, she grew to be known for her acting talent and beauty, as well as her Hollywood lifestyle, including many marriages. Taylor is considered one of the great actresses of Hollywood's golden age. The American Film Institute named Taylor seventh on its Female Legends list.

 Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in Hampstead, a wealthy district of North West London, the second child of Francis Lenn Taylor (1897–1968) and Sara Viola Warmbrodt (1895–1994), who were Americans residing in England. Taylor's older brother, Howard Taylor, was born in 1929.

Here parents were originally from Arkansas City, Kansas. Her father was an art dealer and her mother a former actress.  Shortly before the beginning of World War II, her parents decided to return to the United States to avoid hostilities. They settled in Los Angeles, California, where Sara's family, the Warmbrodts, were then living. Taylor appeared in her first motion picture at the age of nine in There's One Born Every Minute, her only film for Universal Pictures.

Taylor has devoted much time and energy to AIDS-related charities and fundraising. She helped start the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) after the death of her former costar and friend, Rock Hudson. She also created her own AIDS foundation, the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation (ETAF). By 1999, she had helped to raise an estimated US$50 million to fight the disease. In 2006, Taylor commissioned a 37-foot (11 m) "Care Van" equipped with examination tables and X Ray equipment and also donated US$40,000 to the New Orleans Aids task force, a charity designed for the New Orleans population with AIDS and HIV. The donation of the van was made by the Elizabeth Taylor HIV/AIDS Foundation and Macy's.

She was born with a mutation that caused double rows of eyelashes, which enhanced her appearance on camera.  Taylor appeared in her first motion picture at the age of nine.it was Taylor's persistence in campaigning for the role of Velvet Brown in MGM's National Velvet that skyrocketed Taylor to stardom at the tender age of 12. Taylor's character, Velvet Brown, is a young girl who trains her beloved horse to win the Grand National. National Velvet, which also costarred beloved American favorite Mickey Rooney and English newcomer Angela Lansbury, became an overwhelming success upon its release in December 1944 and altered Taylor's life forever.

Taylor was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for the following films:Raintree County (1957) opposite Montgomery Clift; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) opposite Paul Newman; and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) with Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn and Mercedes McCambridge.

In 1960, Taylor became the highest paid actress up to that time when she signed a one million dollar contract to play the title role in20th Century Fox's lavish production of Cleopatra, which would eventually be released in 1963.

Taylor won two Academy Awards both for Best Actress, and was awarded the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Academy Award in 1992 for her work fighting AIDS. She joined the list of two time Academy Award winning Best Actress winners which includes Luise Rainer, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Vivien Leigh, Ingrid Bergman, Glenda Jackson, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Jodie Foster and Hillary Swank. (Bergman has a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as well, and Helen Hayes, Maggie Smith, Jessica Lange and Meryl Streep have an Oscar apiece for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Katharine Hepburn has 4 Best Actress Oscars.) ^[32] In 1999, Taylor was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

You can read the Kennedy Center Biography for Elizabeth Taylor here.



And a description of that evening in 2002 here.

Elizabeth Taylor Rose