From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Residence
and First Women, the first ever authorized biography of the most
famous movie star of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Taylor.
No celebrity rivals Elizabeth Taylor's glamour and guts or her level of
fame. She was the last major star to come out of the old Hollywood
studio system and she is a legend known for her beauty and her magnetic
screen presence in a career that spanned most of the twentieth century
and nearly sixty films. But her private life was even more compelling
than her Oscar-winning on-screen performances. During her seventy-nine
years of rapid-fire love and loss she was married eight times to seven
different men. Above all, she was a survivor--by the time she was
twenty-six she was twice divorced and once widowed. Her life was a soap
opera that ended in a deeply meaningful way when she became the first
major celebrity activist to lead the fight against HIV/AIDS. A
co-founder of amfAR, she raised more than $100 million for research and
patient care. She was also a shrewd businesswoman who made a fortune as
the first celebrity perfumer who always demanded to be paid what she was
worth.
In the first ever authorized biography of the Hollywood icon, Kate
Andersen Brower reveals the world through Elizabeth's eyes. Brower uses
Elizabeth's unpublished letters, diary entries, and off-the-record
interview transcripts as well as interviews with 250 of her closest
friends and family to tell the full, unvarnished story of her remarkable
career and her explosive private life that made headlines worldwide.
Elizabeth Taylor captures this intelligent, empathetic, tenacious,
volatile, and complex woman as never before, from her rise to massive
fame at age twelve in National Velvet to becoming the first to
negotiate a million-dollar salary for a film, from her eight marriages
and enduring love affair with Richard Burton to her lifelong battle with
addiction and her courageous efforts as an AIDS activist.
Here is a fascinating and complete portrait worthy of the legendary star
and her legacy.
Elizabeth Taylor features a photo insert.
