ELIZABETH TAYLOR AUDREY HEPBURN original AP wire photos Oliver Stone

Description: These are two original Associated Press wire photos. They measure about 8.5x11 inches. 1. Elizabeth Taylor is flanked by "Platoon" Oscar winners Oliver Stone and Arnold Kopelman at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Kopelman, the producer, won for best best picture; Stone for best director. 1987. 2. Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn with Mathilda Krim, president of Art Against Aids, at the Basle Museum of Art in Switzerland in 1991. These images were transmitted electronically and then printed out on special thermal printers in the newsroom. Like all AP photos of this ilk, they have a sepia tone to them that converts to a lovely black and white when scanned. BACKGROUND Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor DBE (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British and American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She then became the world's highest-paid movie star in the 1960s, remaining a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her seventh on its greatest female screen legends list. Born in London to socially prominent American parents, Taylor moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1939 at the age of 7. She made her acting debut with a minor role in the Universal Pictures film There's One Born Every Minute (1942), but the studio ended her contract after a year. She was then signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and became a popular teen star after appearing in National Velvet (1944). She transitioned to mature roles in the 1950s, when she starred in the comedy Father of the Bride (1950) and received critical acclaim for her performance in the drama A Place in the Sun (1951). She starred in the historical adventure epic Ivanhoe (1952) with Robert Taylor and Joan Fontaine. Despite being one of MGM's most bankable stars, Taylor wished to end her career in the early 1950s. She resented the studio's control and disliked many of the films to which she was assigned. She began receiving more enjoyable roles in the mid-1950s, beginning with the epic drama Giant (1956), and starred in several critically and commercially successful films in the following years. These included two film adaptations of plays by Tennessee Williams: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959); Taylor won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for the latter. Although she disliked her role as a call girl in BUtterfield 8 (1960), her last film for MGM, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. During the production of the film Cleopatra in 1961, Taylor and co-star Richard Burton began an extramarital affair, which caused a scandal. Despite public disapproval, they continued their relationship and were married in 1964. Dubbed "Liz and Dick" by the media, they starred in 11 films together, including The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), The Taming of the Shrew (1967), and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Taylor received the best reviews of her career for Woolf, winning her second Academy Award and several other awards for her performance. She and Burton divorced in 1974 but reconciled soon after, remarrying in 1975. The second marriage ended in divorce in 1976. Taylor's acting career began to decline in the late 1960s, although she continued starring in films until the mid-1970s, after which she focused on supporting the career of her sixth husband, United States Senator John Warner. In the 1980s, she acted in her first substantial stage roles and in several television films and series. She became the second celebrity to launch a perfume brand after Sophia Loren. Taylor was one of the first celebrities to take part in HIV/AIDS activism. She co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985 and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991. From the early 1990s until her death, she dedicated her time to philanthropy, for which she received several accolades, including the Presidential Citizens Medal. Throughout her career, Taylor's personal life was the subject of constant media attention. She was married eight times to seven men, converted to Judaism, endured several serious illnesses, and led a jet set lifestyle, including assembling one of the most expensive private collections of jewelry in the world. After many years of ill health, Taylor died from congestive heart failure in 2011, at the age of 79. Early lifeTwo-year old Taylor, mother Sara Sothern, and brother Howard, in 1934 Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born on 27 February 1932, at Heathwood, her family's home at 8 Wildwood Road in Hampstead Garden Suburb, northwest London, England.[1]: 3–10  She received dual British–American citizenship at birth as her parents, art dealer Francis Lenn Taylor (1897–1968) and stage actress Sara Sothern (1895–1994), were United States citizens, both originally from Arkansas City, Kansas.[1]: 3–10 [a] They moved to London in 1929 and opened an art gallery on Bond Street; their first child, a son named Howard (died 2020), was born the same year. The family lived in London during Taylor's childhood.[1]: 11–19  Their social circle included artists such as Augustus John and Laura Knight and politicians such as Colonel Victor Cazalet.[1]: 11–19  Cazalet was Taylor's unofficial godfather and an important influence in her early life.[1]: 11–19  She was enrolled in Byron House School, a Montessori school in Highgate, and was raised according to the teachings of Christian Science, the religion of her mother and Cazalet.[1]: 3, 11–19, 20–23  In early 1939, the Taylors decided to return to the United States due to fear of impending war in Europe.[1]: 22–26  United States ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy contacted her father, urging him to return to the US with his family.[5] Sara and the children left first in April 1939 aboard the ocean liner SS Manhattan and moved in with Taylor's maternal grandfather in Pasadena, California.[1]: 22–28 [6] Francis stayed behind to close the London gallery and joined them in December.[1]: 22–28  In early 1940, he opened a new gallery in Los Angeles. After briefly living in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, with the Chapman family, the Taylor family settled in Beverly Hills, California, where the two children were enrolled in Hawthorne School.[1]: 27–34  Acting careerSee also: Elizabeth Taylor filmography and List of awards and nominations received by Elizabeth Taylor 1941–1949: Early roles and teenage stardom In California, Taylor's mother was frequently told that her daughter should audition for films.[1]: 27–30  Taylor's eyes in particular, drew attention; they were blue, to the extent of appearing violet, and were rimmed by dark double eyelashes caused by a genetic mutation.[7][1]: 9  Sara was initially opposed to Taylor appearing in films, but after the outbreak of war in Europe made return there unlikely, she began to view the film industry as a way of assimilating to American society.[1]: 27–30  Francis Taylor's Beverly Hills gallery had gained clients from the film industry soon after opening, helped by the endorsement of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, a friend of the Cazalets.[1]: 27–31  Through a client and a school friend's father, Taylor auditioned for both Universal Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in early 1941.[8]: 27–37  Both studios offered Taylor contracts, and Sara Taylor chose to accept Universal's offer.[8]: 27–37  Taylor began her contract in April 1941 and was cast in a small role in There's One Born Every Minute (1942).[8]: 27–37  She did not receive other roles, and her contract was terminated after a year.[8]: 27–37  Universal's casting director explained her dislike of Taylor, stating that "the kid has nothing ... her eyes are too old, she doesn't have the face of a child."[8]: 27–37  Biographer Alexander Walker agrees that Taylor looked different from the child stars of the era, such as Shirley Temple and Judy Garland.[8]: 32  Taylor later said that, "apparently, I used to frighten grown ups, because I was totally direct."[9] Taylor received another opportunity in late 1942, when her father's acquaintance, MGM producer Samuel Marx, arranged for her to audition for a minor role in Lassie Come Home (1943), which required a child actress with an English accent .[1]: 22–23, 27–37  After a trial contract of three months, she was given a standard seven-year contract in January 1943.[1]: 38–41  Following Lassie, she appeared in minor uncredited roles in two other films set in England – Jane Eyre (1943) playing Helen Burns, and The White Cliffs of Dover (1944).[1]: 38–41  Mickey Rooney and Taylor in National Velvet (1944), her first major film role Taylor was cast in her first starring role at the age of 12, when she was chosen to play a girl who wants to compete as a jockey in the exclusively male Grand National in National Velvet.[1]: 40–47  She later called it "the most exciting film" of her career.[10] Since 1937, MGM had looked for a suitable actress with a British accent and the ability to ride horses. They decided on Taylor at the recommendation of White Cliffs director Clarence Brown, who knew she had the necessary skills.[1]: 40–47  At that time Taylor was deemed too short for the role so filming was delayed several months in order for Taylor to grow an inch or two. In the interim Taylor spent her time practicing her horseback riding.[1]: 40–47  In MGM's effort developing Taylor into a film star, they required her to wear braces to straighten her teeth, and had two of her baby teeth pulled out.[1]: 40–47  The studio also wanted to dye her hair, change the shape of her eyebrows, and proposed that she use the screen name "Virginia", but Taylor and her parents refused.[9] National Velvet became a box-office success upon its release on Christmas 1944.[1]: 40–47  Bosley Crowther of The New York Times stated that "her whole manner in this picture is one of refreshing grace",[11] while James Agee of The Nation wrote that she "is rapturously beautiful... I hardly know or care whether she can act or not."[12] Taylor later stated that her childhood ended when she became a star, as MGM started to control every aspect of her life.[9][13][1]: 48–51  She described the studio as a "big extended factory actory", where she was required to adhere to a strict daily schedule.[9] Her days were spent attending school, and filming at the studio lot. In the evenings, Taylor took dancing and singing classes, and practiced the following day's scenes.[1]: 48–51  Following the success of National Velvet, MGM gave Taylor a new seven-year contract with a weekly salary of $750. They cast her in a minor role in the third film of the Lassie series, Courage of Lassie (1946).[1]: 51–58  MGM also published a book of Taylor's writings about her pet chipmunk, Nibbles and Me (1946), and had paper dolls and coloring books made in her likeness.[1]: 51–58  Taylor and Jane Powell in A Date with Judy (1948) When Taylor turned 15 in 1947, MGM began to cultivate a more mature public image for her by organizing photo shoots and interviews that portrayed her as a "normal" teenager attending parties and going on dates.[8]: 56–57, 65–74  Film magazines and gossip columnists also began comparing her to older actresses such as Ava Gardner and Lana Turner.[8]: 71  Life called her "Hollywood's most accomplished junior actress" for her two film roles that year.[8]: 69  In the critically panned Cynthia (1947), Taylor portrayed a frail girl who defies her over-protective parents to go to the prom; in the period film Life with Father (1947), opposite William Powell and Irene Dunne, she portrayed the love interest of a stockbroker's son.[14][1]: 58–70 [15] They were followed by supporting roles as a teenaged "man-stealer" who seduces her peer's date to a high school dance in the musical A Date with Judy (1948), and as a bride in the romantic comedy Julia Misbehaves (1948). This became a commercial success, grossing over $4 million in the box office.[16][1]: 82  Taylor's last adolescent role was as Amy March in Mervyn LeRoy's Little Women (1949), a box-office success.[17] The same year, Time featured Taylor on its cover, and called her the leader among Hollywood's next generation of stars, "a jewel of great price, a true sapphire."[18] 1950–1951: Transition to adult rolesWith Spencer Tracy in Father of the Bride (1950) Taylor made the transition to adult roles when she turned 18 in 1950. In her first mature role, the thriller Conspirator (1949), she plays a woman who begins to suspect that her husband is a Soviet spy.[1]: 75–83  Taylor had been only 16 at the time of its filming, but its release was delayed until March 1950, as MGM disliked it and feared it could cause diplomatic problems.[1]: 75–83 [19] Taylor's second film of 1950 was the comedy The Big Hangover (1950), co-starring Van Johnson.[20] It was released in May. That same month, Taylor married hotel-chain heir Conrad "Nicky" Hilton Jr. in a highly publicized ceremony.[1]: 99–105  The event was organized by MGM, and used as part of the publicity campaign for Taylor's next film, Vincente Minnelli's comedy Father of the Bride (1950), in which she appeared opposite Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett as a bride preparing for her wedding.[1]: 99–105  The film became a box-office success upon its release in June, grossing $6 million worldwide ($75,983,402 in 2023 dollars [21]), and was followed by a successful sequel, Father's Little Dividend (1951), ten months later.[22] Taylor's next film release, George Stevens' A Place in the Sun (1951), marked a departure from her earlier films. According to Taylor, it was the first film in which she had been asked to act, instead of simply being herself,[13] and it brought her critical acclaim for the first time since National Velvet.[1]: 96–97  Based on Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy (1925), it featured Taylor as a spoiled socialite who comes between a poor factory worker (Montgomery Clift) and his pregnant girlfriend (Shelley Winters).[1]: 91  Stevens cast Taylor as she was "the only one ... who could create this illusion" of being "not so much a real girl as the girl on the candy-box cover, the beautiful girl in the yellow Cadillac convertible that every American boy sometime or other thinks he can marry."[1]: 92 [23] A Place in the Sun was a critical and commercial success, grossing $3 million.[24] Herb Golden of Variety said that Taylor's "histrionics are of a quality so far beyond anything she has done previously, that Stevens' skilled hands on the reins must be credited with a minor miracle."[25] A.H. Weiler of The New York Times wrote that she gives "a shaded, tender performance, and one in which her passionate and genuine romance avoids the pathos common to young love as it sometimes comes to the screen."[26] 1952–1955: Continued success at MGM Portrait, 1952 Taylor next starred in the romantic comedy Love Is Better Than Ever (1952).[1]: 124–125  According to Alexander Walker, MGM cast her in the "B-picture" as a reprimand for divorcing Hilton in January 1951 after only eight months of marriage, which had caused a public scandal that reflected negatively on her.[1]: 124–125  After completing Love Is Better Than Ever, Taylor was sent to Britain to take part in the historical epic Ivanhoe (1952), which was one of the most expensive projects in the studio's history.[1]: 129–132  She was not happy about the project, finding the story superficial and her role as Rebecca too small.[1]: 129–132  Regardless, Ivanhoe became one of MGM's biggest commercial successes, earning $11 million in worldwide rentals.[27] Van Johnson and Taylor in the romantic drama The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) Taylor's last film made under her old contract with MGM was The Girl Who Had Everything (1953), a remake of the pre-code drama A Free Soul (1931).[1]: 145  Despite her grievances with the studio, Taylor signed a new seven-year contract with MGM in the summer of 1952.[1]: 139–143  Although she wanted more interesting roles, the decisive factor in continuing with the studio was her financial need; she had recently married British actor Michael Wilding, and was pregnant with her first child.[1]: 139–143  In addition to granting her a weekly salary of $4,700 ($53,524 in 2023 dollars [21]), MGM agreed to give the couple a loan for a house, and signed her husband for a three-year contract.[1]: 141–143  Due to her financial dependency, the studio now had even more control over her than previously.[1]: 141–143  Publicity photo, 1954 Taylor's first two films made under her new contract were released ten days apart in early 1954.[1]: 153  The first was Rhapsody, a romantic film starring her as a woman caught in a love triangle with two musicians. The second was Elephant Walk, a drama in which she played a British woman struggling to adapt to life on her husband's tea plantation in Ceylon. She had been loaned to Paramount Pictures for the film after its original star, Vivien Leigh, fell ill.[1]: 148–149  In the fall, Taylor starred in two more film releases. Beau Brummell was a Regency era period film, another project in which she was cast against her will.[1]: 153–154  Taylor disliked historical films in general, as their elaborate costumes and makeup required her to wake up earlier than usual to prepare. She later said that she gave one of the worst performances of her career in Beau Brummell.[1]: 153–154  The second film was Richard Brooks' The Last Time I Saw Paris, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story. Although she had wanted to be cast in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) instead, Taylor liked the film, and later stated that it "convinced me I wanted to be an actress instead of yawning my way through parts."[1]: 153–157 [28] While The Last Time I Saw Paris was not as profitable as many other MGM films, it garnered positive reviews.[1]: 153–157 [28] Taylor became pregnant again during the production, and had to agree to add another year to her contract to make up for the period spent on maternity leave.[1]: 153–157  1956–1960: Critical acclaimTaylor and Rock Hudson in Giant (1956) By the mid-1950s, the American film industry was beginning to face serious competition from television, which resulted in studios producing fewer films, and focusing instead on their quality.[8]: 158–165  The change benefited Taylor, who finally found more challenging roles after several years of career disappointments.[8]: 158–165  After lobbying director George Stevens, she won the female lead role in Giant (1956), an epic drama about a ranching dynasty, which co-starred Rock Hudson and James Dean.[8]: 158–165  Its filming in Marfa, Texas, was a difficult experience for Taylor, as she clashed with Stevens, who wanted to break her will to make her easier to direct, and was often ill, resulting in delays.[8]: 158–165 [29] To further complicate the production, Dean died in a car accident only days after completing filming; the grieving Taylor still had to film reaction shots to their joint scenes.[8]: 158–166  When Giant was released a year later, it became a box-office success, and was widely praised by critics.[8]: 158–165  Although not nominated for an Academy Award like her co-stars, Taylor garnered positive reviews for her performance, with Variety calling it "surprisingly clever",[30] and The Manchester Guardian lauding her acting as "an astonishing revelation of unsuspected gifts." It named her one of the film's strongest assets.[31] MGM re-united Taylor with Montgomery Clift in Raintree County (1957), a Civil War drama which it hoped would replicate the success of Gone with the Wind (1939).[1]: 166–177  Taylor found her role as a mentally disturbed Southern belle fascinating, but overall disliked the film.[1]: 166–177  Although the film failed to become the type of success MGM had planned,[32] Taylor was nominated for the first time for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.[33] In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) Taylor considered her next performance as Maggie the Cat in the screen adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) a career "high point." But it coincided with one of the most difficult periods in her personal life.[13] After completing Raintree Country, she had divorced Wilding and married producer Mike Todd. She had completed only two weeks of filming in March 1958, when Todd was killed in a plane crash.[1]: 186–194  Although she was devastated, pressure from the studio and the knowledge that Todd had large debts led Taylor to return to work only three weeks later.[1]: 195–203  She later said that "in a way ... [she] became Maggie", and that acting "was the only time I could function" in the weeks after Todd's death.[13] During the production, Taylor's personal life drew more attention when she began an affair with singer Eddie Fisher, whose marriage to actress Debbie Reynolds had been idealized by the media as the union of "America's sweethearts."[1]: 203–210  The affair – and Fisher's subsequent divorce – changed Taylor's public image from a grieving widow to a "homewrecker". MGM used the scandal to its advantage by featuring an image of Taylor posing on a bed in a slip in the film's promotional posters.[1]: 203–210  Cat grossed $10 million in American cinemas alone, and made Taylor the year's second-most profitable star.[1]: 203–210  She received positive reviews for her performance, with Bosley Crowther of The New York Times calling her "terrific",[34] and Variety praising her for "a well-accented, perceptive interpretation."[35] Taylor was nominated for an Academy Award[33] and a BAFTA.[36] Taylor's next film, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), was another Tennessee Williams adaptation, with a screenplay by Gore Vidal and also starring Montgomery Clift and Katharine Hepburn. The independent production earned Taylor $500,000 for playing the role of a severely traumatized patient in a mental institution.[1]: 203–210  Although the film was a drama about mental illness, childhood traumas, and homosexuality, it was again promoted with Taylor's sex appeal; both its trailer and poster featured her in a white swimsuit. The strategy worked, as the film was a financial success.[37] Taylor received her third Academy Award nomination[33] and her first Golden Globe for Best Actress for her performance.[1]: 203–210  By 1959, Taylor owed one more film for MGM, which it decided should be BUtterfield 8 (1960), a drama about a high-class call girl, in an adaptation of a John O'Hara 1935 novel of the same name.[1]: 211–223  The studio correctly calculated that Taylor's public image would make it easy for audiences to associate her with the role.[1]: 211–223  She hated the film for the same reason, but had no choice in the matter, although the studio agreed to her demands of filming in New York and casting Eddie Fisher in a sympathetic role.[1]: 211–223  As predicted, BUtterfield 8 was a major commercial success, grossing $18 million in world rentals.[1]: 224–236  Crowther wrote that Taylor "looks like a million dollars, in mink or in negligée",[38] while Variety stated that she gives "a torrid, stinging portrayal with one or two brilliantly executed passages within."[39] Taylor won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.[1]: 224–236  1961–1967: Cleopatra and other collaborations with Richard BurtonRichard Burton as Mark Antony with Taylor as Cleopatra in Cleopatra (1963) After completing her MGM contract, Taylor starred in 20th Century-Fox's Cleopatra (1963). According to film historian Alexander Doty, this historical epic made her more famous than ever before.[40] She became the first movie star to be paid $1 million for a role; Fox also granted her 10% of the film's gross profits, as well as shooting the film in Todd-AO, a widescreen format for which she had inherited the rights from Mike Todd.[8]: 10–11 [1]: 211–223  The film's production – characterized by costly sets and costumes, constant delays, and a scandal caused by Taylor's extramarital affair with her co-star Richard Burton – was closely followed by the media, with Life proclaiming it the "Most Talked About Movie Ever Made."[8]: 11–12, 39, 45–46, 56  Filming began in England in 1960, but had to be halted several times because of bad weather and Taylor's ill health.[8]: 12–13  In March 1961, she developed nearly fatal pneumonia, which necessitated a tracheotomy; one news agency erroneously reported that she had died.[8]: 12–13  Once she had recovered, Fox discarded the already filmed material, and moved the production to Rome, changing its director to Joseph Mankiewicz, and the actor playing Mark Antony to Burton.[8]: 12–18  Filming was finally completed in July 1962.[8]: 39  The film's final cost was $62 million (equivalent to $625 million in 2023), making it the most expensive film made up to that point.[8]: 46  Cleopatra became the biggest box-office success of 1963 in the United States; the film grossed $15.7 million at the box office (equivalent to $156 million in 2023).[8]: 56–57  Regardless, it took several years for the film to earn back its production costs, which drove Fox near to bankruptcy. The studio publicly blamed Taylor for the production's troubles and unsuccessfully sued Burton and Taylor for allegedly damaging the film's commercial prospects with their behavior.[8]: 46  The film's reviews were mixed to negative, with critics finding Taylor overweight and her voice too thin, and unfavorably comparing her with her classically trained British co-stars.[8]: 56–58 [1]: 265–267 [41] In retrospect, Taylor called Cleopatra a "low point" in her career, and said that the studio had cut out the scenes which she felt provided the "core of the characterization."[13] Taylor intended to follow Cleopatra by headlining an all-star cast in Fox's black comedy What a Way to Go! (1964), but negotiations fell through, and Shirley MacLaine was cast instead. In the meantime, film producers were eager to profit from the scandal surrounding Taylor and Burton, and they next starred together in Anthony Asquith's The V.I.P.s (1963), which mirrored the headlines about them.[8]: 42–45 [1]: 252–255, 260–266  Taylor played a famous model attempting to leave her husband for a lover, and Burton her estranged millionaire husband. Released soon after Cleopatra, it became a box-office success.[1]: 264  Taylor was also paid $500,000 (equivalent to $4.98 million in 2023) to appear in a CBS television special, Elizabeth Taylor in London, in which she visited the city's landmarks and recited passages from the works of famous British writers.[8]: 74–75  Taylor and Burton in The Sandpiper (1965) After completing The V.I.P.s, Taylor took a two-year hiatus from films, during which she and Burton divorced their spouses and married each other.[8]: 112  The supercouple continued starring together in films in the mid-1960s, earning a combined $88 million over the next decade; Burton once stated, "They say we generate more business activity than one of the smaller African nations."[8]: 193 [42] Biographer Alexander Walker compared these films to "illustrated gossip columns", as their film roles often reflected their public personae, while film historian Alexander Doty has noted that the majority of Taylor's films during this period seemed to "conform to, and reinforce, the image of an indulgent, raucous, immoral or amoral, and appetitive (in many senses of the word) 'Elizabeth Taylor'".[1]: 294 [43] Taylor and Burton's first joint project following her hiatus was Vincente Minelli's romantic drama The Sandpiper (1965), about an illicit love affair between a bohemian artist and a married clergyman in Big Sur, California. Its reviews were largely negative, but it grossed a successful $14 million in the box office (equivalent to $135 million in 2023).[8]: 116–118  Their next project, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), an adaptation of a play of the same name by Edward Albee, featured the most critically acclaimed performance of Taylor's career.[8]: 142, 151–152 [1]: 286  She and Burton starred as Martha and George, a middle-aged couple going through a marital crisis. In order to convincingly play 50-year-old Martha, Taylor gained weight, wore a wig, and used makeup to make herself look older and tired – in stark contrast to her public image as a glamorous film star.[8]: 136–137 [1]: 281–282  At Taylor's suggestion, theatre director Mike Nichols was hired to direct the project, despite his lack of experience with film.[8]: 139–140  The production differed from anything she had done previously, as Nichols wanted to thoroughly rehearse the play before beginning filming.[8]: 141  Woolf was considered ground-breaking for its adult themes and uncensored language, and opened to "glorious" reviews.[8]: 140, 151  Variety wrote that Taylor's "characterization is at once sensual, spiteful, cynical, pitiable, loathsome, lustful, and tender."[44] Stanley Kauffmann of The New York Times stated that she "does the best work of her career, sustained and urgent."[45] The film also became one of the biggest commercial successes of the year.[8]: 151–152 [1]: 286  Taylor received her second Academy Award, and BAFTA, National Board of Review, and New York City Film Critics Circle awards for her performance. Taylor and Burton in 1965 In 1966, Taylor and Burton performed Doctor Faustus for a week in Oxford to benefit the Oxford University Dramatic Society; he starred and she appeared in her first stage role as Helen of Troy, a part which required no speaking.[8]: 186–189  Although it received generally negative reviews, Burton produced it as a film, Doctor Faustus (1967), with the same cast.[8]: 186–189  It was also panned by critics and grossed only $600,000 in the box office (equivalent to $5.48 million in 2023).[8]: 230–232  Taylor and Burton's next project, Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (1967), which they also co-produced, was more successful.[8]: 164  It posed another challenge for Taylor, as she was the only actor in the project with no previous experience of performing Shakespeare; Zeffirelli later stated that this made her performance interesting, as she "invented the part from scratch."[8]: 168  Critics found the play to be fitting material for the couple, and the film became a box-office success by grossing $12 million (equivalent to $109.65 million in 2023).[8]: 181, 186  Taylor's third film released in 1967, John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye, was her first without Burton since Cleopatra. Based on a novel of the same name by Carson McCullers, it was a drama about a repressed gay military officer and his unfaithful wife. It was originally slated to co-star Taylor's old friend Montgomery Clift, whose career had been in decline for several years owing to his substance abuse problems. Determined to secure his involvement in the project, Taylor even offered to pay for his insurance.[8]: 157–161  But Clift died from a heart attack before filming began; he was replaced in the role by Marlon Brando.[8]: 175, 189  Reflections was a critical and commercial failure at the time of its release.[8]: 233–234  Taylor and Burton's last film of the year was the adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, The Comedians, which received mixed reviews and was a box-office disappointment.[8]: 228–232  1968–1979: Career declineTaylor in 1971 Taylor's career was in decline by the late 1960s. She had gained weight, was in her late 30s and did not fit in with New Hollywood stars such as Jane Fonda and Julie Christie.[8]: 135–136 [1]: 294–296, 307–308  After several years of nearly constant media attention, the public was tiring of Burton and her, and criticized their jet set lifestyle.[8]: 142, 151–152 [1]: 294–296, 305–306  In 1968, Taylor starred in two films directed by Joseph Losey – Boom! and Secret Ceremony – both of which were critical and commercial failures.[8]: 238–246  The former, based on Tennessee Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, features her as an ageing, serial-marrying millionaire, and Burton as a younger man who turns up on the Mediterranean island on which she has retired.[8]: 211–217  Secret Ceremony is a psychological drama that also stars Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum.[8]: 242–243, 246  Taylor's third film with George Stevens, The Only Game in Town (1970), in which she played a Las Vegas showgirl who has an affair with a compulsive gambler, played by Warren Beatty, was unsuccessful.[8]: 287 [46] The three 1972 films in which Taylor acted were somewhat more successful. X Y & Zee, which portrayed Michael Caine and her as a troubled married couple, won her the David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actress. She appeared with Burton in the adaptation of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood; although her role was small, the producers decided to give her top-billing to profit from her fame.[8]: 313–316  Her third film role that year was playing a blonde diner waitress in Peter Ustinov's Faust parody Hammersmith Is Out, her tenth collaboration with Burton. Although it was overall not successful,[8]: 316  Taylor received some good reviews, with Vincent Canby of The New York Times writing that she has "a certain vulgar, ratty charm",[47] and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times saying, "The spectacle of Elizabeth Taylor growing older and more beautiful continues to amaze the population."[48] Her performance won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival.[46] In Divorce His, Divorce Hers (1973), Taylor's last film with Burton Taylor and Burton's last film together was the Harlech Television film Divorce His, Divorce Hers (1973), fittingly named as they divorced the following year.[8]: 357  Her other films released in 1973 were the British thriller Night Watch (1973) and the American drama Ash Wednesday (1973).[8]: 341–349, 357–358  For the latter, in which she starred as a woman who undergoes multiple plastic surgeries in an attempt to save her marriage, she received a Golden Globe nomination.[49] Her only film released in 1974, the Italian Muriel Spark adaptation The Driver's Seat (1974), was a failure.[8]: 371–375  Taylor took fewer roles after the mid-1970s, and focused on supporting the career of her sixth husband, Republican politician John Warner, a US senator. In 1976, she participated in the Soviet-American fantasy film The Blue Bird (1976), a critical and box-office failure, and had a small role in the television film Victory at Entebbe (1976). In 1977, she sang in the critically panned film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical A Little Night Music (1977).[8]: 388–389, 403  1980–2007: Stage and television roles; retirementTaylor in 1981 at an event honoring her career After a period of semi-retirement from films, Taylor starred in The Mirror Crack'd (1980), adapted from an Agatha Christie mystery novel and featuring an ensemble cast of actors from the studio era, such as Angela Lansbury, Kim Novak, Rock Hudson, and Tony Curtis.[8]: 435  Wanting to challenge herself, she took on her first substantial stage role, playing Regina Giddens in a Broadway production of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes.[8]: 411 [1]: 347–362  Instead of portraying Giddens in negative light, as had often been the case in previous productions, Taylor's idea was to show her as a victim of circumstance, explaining, "She's a killer, but she's saying, 'Sorry fellas, you put me in this position'."[1]: 349  The production premiered in May 1981, and had a sold-out six-month run despite mixed reviews.[8]: 411 [1]: 347–362  Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote that Taylor's performance as "Regina Giddens, that malignant Southern bitch-goddess ... begins gingerly, soon gathers steam, and then explodes into a black and thunderous storm that may just knock you out of your seat",[50] while Dan Sullivan of the Los Angeles Times stated, "Taylor presents a possible Regina Giddens, as seen through the persona of Elizabeth Taylor. There's some acting in it, as well as some personal display."[51] She appeared as evil socialite Helena Cassadine in the day-time soap opera General Hospital in November 1981.[1]: 347–362  The following year, she continued performing The Little Foxes in London's West End, but received largely negative reviews from the British press.[1]: 347–362  Encouraged by the success of The Little Foxes, Taylor and producer Zev Buffman founded the Elizabeth Taylor Repertory Company.[1]: 347–362  Its first and only production was a revival of Noël Coward's comedy Private Lives, starring Taylor and Burton.[8]: 413–425 [1]: 347–362 [52] It premiered in Boston in early 1983, and although commercially successful, received generally negative reviews, with critics noting that both stars were in noticeably poor health – Taylor admitted herself to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center after the play's run ended, and Burton died the following year.[8]: 413–425 [1]: 347–362  After the failure of Private Lives, Taylor dissolved her theatre company.[53] Her only other project that year was the television film Between Friends.[54] Taylor and Bob Hope perform in a United Service Organization show aboard the training aircraft carrier USS Lexington during the celebration of the 75th anniversary of naval aviation in 1986 From the mid-1980s, Taylor acted mostly in television productions. She made cameos in the soap operas Hotel and All My Children in 1984, and played a brothel keeper in the historical mini-series North and South in 1985.[8]: 363–373  She also starred in several television films, playing gossip columnist Louella Parsons in Malice in Wonderland (1985), a "fading movie star" in the drama There Must Be a Pony (1986),[55] and a character based on Poker Alice in the eponymous Western (1987).[1]: 363–373  She re-united with director Franco Zeffirelli to appear in his French-Italian biopic Young Toscanini (1988), and had the last starring role of her career in a television adaptation of Sweet Bird of Youth (1989), her fourth Tennessee Williams play.[1]: 363–373  During this time, she also began receiving honorary awards for her career – the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1985,[49] and the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Chaplin Award in 1986.[56] In the 1990s, Taylor focused her time on HIV/AIDS activism. Her few acting roles included characters in the animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1992) and The Simpsons (1992, 1993),[57] and cameos in four CBS series – The Nanny, Can't Hurry Love, Murphy Brown, and High Society – all airing on February 26, 1996, to promote her new fragrance.[58] Her last theatrically released film was in the critically panned, but commercially successful, The Flintstones (1994), in which she played Pearl Slaghoople in a brief supporting role.[8]: 436  Taylor received American and British honors for her career: the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1993,[59] the Screen Actors Guild honorary award in 1997,[60] and a BAFTA Fellowship in 1999.[61] In 2000, she was appointed a Dame Commander in the chivalric Order of the British Empire in the millennium New Year Honours List by Queen Elizabeth II.[62][63] After supporting roles in the television film These Old Broads (2001) and in the animated sitcom God, the Devil and Bob (2001), Taylor announced that she was retiring from acting to devote her time to philanthropy.[8]: 436 [64] She gave one last public performance in 2007, when she performed the play Love Letters at an AIDS benefit at the Paramount Studios with James Earl Jones.[8]: 436  Other venturesHIV/AIDS activism Taylor was one of the first celebrities to participate in HIV/AIDS activism and helped to raise more than $270 million for the cause since the mid-1980s.[65] She began her philanthropic work after becoming frustrated with the fact that very little was being done to combat the disease despite the media attention.[66] She later explained for Vanity Fair that she "decided that with my name, I could open certain doors, that I was a commodity in myself – and I'm not talking as an actress. I could take the fame I'd resented and tried to get away from for so many years – but you can never get away from it – and use it to do some good. I wanted to retire, but the tabloids wouldn't let me. So, I thought: If you're going to screw me over, I'll use you."[67] Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (left) alongside Taylor (right), who is testifying in 1990 before the House Budget Committee on HIV-AIDS Funding Taylor began her philanthropic efforts in 1984, helping to organize and by hosting the first AIDS fundraiser to benefit the AIDS Project Los Angeles.[67][68] In August 1985, she and Michael Gottlieb founded the National AIDS Research Foundation after her friend and former co-star Rock Hudson announced that he was dying of the disease.[67][68] The following month, the foundation merged with Mathilde Krim's AIDS foundation to form the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).[69][70] As amfAR's focus is on research funding, Taylor founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) in 1991 to raise awareness and to provide support services for people with HIV/AIDS, paying for its overhead costs herself.[67][68][71] Since her death, her estate has continued to fund ETAF's work, and donates 25% of royalties from the use of her image and likeness to the foundation.[71] In addition to her work for people affected by HIV/AIDS in the United States, Taylor was instrumental in expanding amfAR's operations to other countries; ETAF also operates internationally.[67] Taylor testified before the Senate and House for the Ryan White Care Act in 1986, 1990, and 1992.[70][72] She persuaded President Ronald Reagan to acknowledge the disease for the first time in a speech in 1987, and publicly criticized presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton for lack of interest in combatting the disease.[67][68] Taylor also founded the Elizabeth Taylor Medical Center to offer free HIV/AIDS testing and care at the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, DC, and the Elizabeth Taylor Endowment Fund for the UCLA Clinical AIDS Research and Education Center in Los Angeles.[70] In 2015, Taylor's business partner Kathy Ireland claimed that Taylor ran an illegal "underground network" that distributed medications to Americans suffering from HIV/AIDS during the 1980s, when the Food and Drug Administration had not yet approved them.[73] The claim was challenged by several people, including amfAR's former vice-president for development and external affairs, Taylor's former publicist, and activists who were involved in Project Inform in the 1980s and 1990s.[74] Taylor was honored with several awards for her philanthropic work. She was made a Knight of the French Legion of Honour in 1987, and received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993, the Screen Actors' Guild Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanitarian service in 1997, the GLAAD Vanguard Award in 2000, and the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001.[70] Fragrance and jewelry brandsTaylor promoting her first fragrance, Passion, in 1987 Taylor created a collection of fragrances whose unprecedented success helped establish the trend of celebrity-branded perfumes in later years.[75][76][77] In collaboration with Elizabeth Arden, Inc., she began by launching two best-selling perfumes – Passion in 1987, and White Diamonds in 1991.[76] Taylor personally supervised the creation and production of each of the 11 fragrances marketed in her name.[76] According to biographers Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger, she earned more money through the fragrance collection than during her entire acting career,[8]: 436  and upon her death, the British newspaper The Guardian estimated that the majority of her estimated $600 million-$1 billion estate consisted of revenue from fragrances.[76] In 2005, Taylor also founded a jewelry company, House of Taylor, in collaboration with Kathy Ireland and Jack and Monty Abramov.[78] Personal lifeMarriages, relationships, and children Throughout her adult years, Taylor's personal life, especially her eight marriages (two to the same man), drew a large amount of media attention and public disapproval. According to biographer Alexander Walker, "Whether she liked it or not ... marriage is the matrix of the myth that began surrounding Elizabeth Taylor from [when she was sixteen]."[1]: 126  In 1948, MGM arranged for her to date American football champion Glenn Davis and she announced plans for them to marry once he returned from Korea.[79] The following year, Taylor was briefly engaged to William Pawley Jr., son of US ambassador William D. Pawley.[80][1]: 75–88  Film tycoon Howard Hughes also wanted to marry her, and offered to pay her parents a six-figure sum of money if she were to become his wife.[1]: 81–82  Taylor declined the offer, but was otherwise eager to marry young, as her "rather puritanical upbringing and beliefs" made her believe that "love was synonymous with marriage."[13] Taylor later described herself as being "emotionally immature" during this time due to her sheltered childhood, and believed that she could gain independence from her parents and MGM through marriage.[13] Taylor was 18 years old when she married Conrad "Nicky" Hilton Jr., heir to the Hilton Hotels chain, at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills on May 6, 1950.[81][1]: 106–112  MGM organized the large and expensive wedding, which became a major media event.[1]: 106–112  In the weeks after their wedding, Taylor realized that she had made a mistake; not only did she and Hilton have few interests in common, but he was also abusive and a heavy drinker.[1]: 113–119  Taylor suffered a miscarriage during one of his violent outbursts.[82][83][84] She announced their separation on December 14, 1950,[85] and was granted a divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty on January 29, 1951, eight months after their wedding.[86][1]: 120–125  Taylor married her second husband, British actor Michael Wilding – a man 20 years her senior – in a low-key ceremony at Caxton Hall in London on February 21, 1952.[1]: 139  She had first met him in 1948 while filming The Conspirator in England, and their relationship began when she returned to film Ivanhoe in 1951.[1]: 131–133  Taylor found their age gap appealing. She wanted "the calm and quiet and security of friendship" from their relationship;[13] he hoped that the marriage would aid his career in Hollywood.[1]: 136  They had two sons: Michael Howard (born January 6, 1953) and Christopher Edward (born February 27, 1955).[1]: 148, 160  As Taylor grew older and more confident in herself, she began to drift apart from Wilding, whose failing career was also a source of marital strife.[1]: 160–165  When she was away filming Giant in 1955, gossip magazine Confidential caused a scandal by claiming that he had entertained strippers at their home.[1]: 164–165  Taylor and Wilding announced their separation on July 18, 1956, and were divorced on January 26, 1957.[87] Taylor with her third husband Mike Todd and her three children in 1957 Taylor was three months pregnant when she married her third husband, theatre and film producer Mike Todd, in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico, on February 2, 1957.[1]: 178–180  They had one daughter, Elizabeth "Liza" Frances (born August 6, 1957).[1]: 186  Todd, known for publicity stunts, encouraged the media attention to their marriage; for example, in June 1957, he threw a birthday party at Madison Square Garden, which was attended by 18,000 guests and broadcast on CBS.[8]: 5–6 [1]: 188  His death in a plane crash on 22 March 1958, left Taylor devastated.[8]: 5–6 [1]: 193–202  She was comforted by a friend of hers and Todd's, singer Eddie Fisher, with whom she soon began an affair.[8]: 7–9 [1]: 201–210  Fisher was still married to actress Debbie Reynolds. The affair resulted in a public scandal, with Taylor being branded a "homewrecker."[8]: 7–9 [1]: 201–210  Taylor and Fisher were married at the Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas on May 12, 1959; she later stated that she married him only due to her grief.[8]: 7–9 [1]: 201–210 [13] While filming Cleopatra in Italy in 1962, Taylor began an affair with her co-star, Welsh actor Richard Burton, although Burton was also married. Rumors about the affair began to circulate in the press, and were confirmed by a paparazzi shot of them on a yacht in Ischia.[8]: 27–34  According to sociologist Ellis Cashmore, the publication of the photograph was a "turning point", beginning a new era in which it became difficult for celebrities to keep their personal lives separate from their public images.[88] The scandal caused Taylor and Burton to be condemned for "erotic vagrancy" by the Vatican, with calls also in the US Congress to bar them from re-entering the country.[8]: 36  Taylor was granted a divorce from Fisher on March 5, 1964, in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico, and married Burton 10 days later in a private ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton Montreal.[8]: 99–100  Burton subsequently adopted Liza Todd and Maria McKeown (born 1961), a German orphan whose adoption process Taylor had begun while married to Fisher.[89][90] Dubbed "Liz and Dick" by the media, Taylor and Burton starred together in 11 films, and led a jet-set lifestyle, spending millions on "furs, diamonds, paintings, designer clothes, travel, food, liquor, a yacht, and a jet."[8]: 193  Sociologist Karen Sternheimer states that they "became a cottage industry of speculation about their alleged life of excess. From reports of massive spending [...] affairs, and even an open marriage, the couple came to represent a new era of 'gotcha' celebrity coverage, where the more personal the story, the better."[91] They divorced for the first time in June 1974, but reconciled, and remarried in Kasane, Botswana, on 10 October 1975.[8]: 376, 391–394  The second marriage lasted less than a year, ending in divorce in July 1976.[8]: 384–385, 406  Taylor and Burton's relationship was often referred to as the "marriage of the century" by the media, and she later stated, "After Richard, the men in my life were just there to hold the coat, to open the door. All the men after Richard were really just company."[8]: vii, 437  Soon after her final divorce from Burton, Taylor met her sixth husband, John Warner, a Republican politician from Virginia.[8]: 402–405  They were married on 4 December 1976, after which Taylor concentrated on working for his electoral campaign.[8]: 402–405  Once Warner had been elected to the Senate, she started to find her life as a politician's wife in Washington, D.C. boring and lonely, becoming depressed, overweight, and increasingly addicted to prescription drugs and alcohol.[8]: 402–405  Taylor and Warner separated in December 1981, and divorced on 5 November 1982.[8]: 410–411  After the divorce from Warner, Taylor dated actors Anthony Geary[92] and George Hamilton,[93] and was engaged to Mexican lawyer Victor Luna in 1983–1984,[8]: 422–434  and New York businessman Dennis Stein in 1985.[94] She met her seventh and last husband, construction worker Larry Fortensky, at the Betty Ford Center in 1988.[8]: 437 [1]: 465–466  They were married at the Neverland Ranch of her close friend Michael Jackson on October 6, 1991.[95] The wedding was again subject to intense media attention, with one photographer parachuting to the ranch and Taylor selling the wedding pictures to People for $1 million (equivalent to $2.24 million in 2023), which she used to start her AIDS foundation.[96][70] Taylor and Fortensky divorced on October 31, 1996,[8]: 437  but remained in contact for life.[97] She attributed the split to her painful hip operations and his obsessive-compulsive disorder.[98][99] In the winter of 1999, Fortensky underwent brain surgery after falling off a balcony and was comatose for six weeks; Taylor immediately notified the hospital she would personally guarantee his medical expenses.[100] At the end of 2010, she wrote him a letter that read: "You’re a part of my life that cannot be carved out nor do I ever wish it to be."[101] Taylor's last phone call with Fortensky was on February 7, 2011, one day before she checked into the hospital for what turned out to be her final stay. He told her she would outlive him.[102] Although they had been divorced for almost 15 years, Taylor left Fortensky $825,000 in her will.[103] In the last years of her life, she had a platonic friendship with the actor Colin Farrell. On the phone, they often talked about the topic of insomnia and how to deal with it.[104] Judaism Taylor was raised as a Christian Scientist, and converted to Judaism in 1959.[8]: 173–174 [1]: 206–210  Although two of her husbands – Mike Todd and Eddie Fisher – were Jewish, Taylor stated that she did not convert because of them, and had wanted to do so "for a long time",[105] and that there was "comfort and dignity and hope for me in this ancient religion that [has] survived for four thousand years... I feel as if I have been a Jew all my life."[106] Walker believed that Taylor was influenced in her decision by her godfather, Victor Cazalet, and her mother, who were active supporters of Zionism during her childhood.[1]: 14  Following her conversion, Taylor became an active supporter of Jewish and Zionist causes.[107][108] In 1959, she purchased $100,000 worth of Israeli bonds, which led to her films being banned by Muslim countries throughout the Middle East and Africa.[109][108] She was also barred from entering Egypt to film Cleopatra in 1962, but the ban was lifted two years later after the Egyptian officials deemed that the film brought positive publicity for the country.[107] In addition to purchasing bonds, Taylor helped to raise money for organizations such as the Jewish National Fund,[107] and sat on the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.[110] Taylor also advocated for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel, cancelled a visit to the USSR because of its condemnation of Israel due to the Six-Day War, and signed a letter protesting the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 of 1975.[107] In 1976, she offered herself as a replacement hostage after more than 100 Israeli civilians were taken hostage in the Entebbe skyjacking.[107] She had a small role in the television film made about the incident, Victory at Entebbe (1976), and narrated Genocide (1981), an Academy Award-winning documentary about the Holocaust.[110] Style and jewelry collectionTaylor in a studio publicity photo in 1953 Taylor is considered a fashion icon both for her film costumes and personal style.[111][112][113] At MGM, her costumes were mostly designed by Helen Rose and Edith Head,[114] and in the 1960s by Irene Sharaff.[112][115] Her most famous costumes include a white ball gown in A Place in the Sun (1951), a Grecian dress in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), a green A-line dress in Suddenly Last Summer (1959), and a slip and a fur coat in BUtterfield 8 (1960).[111][112][113] Her look in Cleopatra (1963) started a trend for "cat-eye" makeup done with black eyeliner.[8]: 135–136  Taylor collected jewelry through her life, and owned the 33.19-carat (6.638 g) Krupp Diamond, the 69.42-carat (13.884 g) Taylor-Burton Diamond, and the 50-carat (10 g) La Peregrina Pearl, all three of which were gifts from husband Richard Burton.[8]: 237–238, 258–259, 275–276  She also published a book about her collection, My Love Affair with Jewelry, in 2002.[112][116] Taylor helped to popularise the work of fashion designers Valentino Garavani[114][117] and Halston.[112][118] She received a Lifetime of Glamour Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) in 1997.[119] After her death, her jewelry and fashion collections were auctioned by Christie's to benefit her AIDS foundation, ETAF. The jewelry sold for a record-breaking sum of $156.8 million,[120] and the clothes and accessories for a further $5.5 million.[121] Illness and deathTaylor's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the days following her death in 2011 Taylor struggled with health problems for most of her life.[65] She was born with scoliosis[122] and broke her back while filming National Velvet in 1944.[1]: 40–47  The fracture went undetected for several years, although it caused her chronic back problems.[1]: 40–47  In 1956, she underwent an operation in which some of her spinal discs were removed and replaced with donated bone.[1]: 175  Taylor was also prone to other illnesses and injuries, which often necessitated surgery; in 1961, she survived a near-fatal bout of pneumonia that required a tracheotomy.[8] She was treated for the pneumonia with bacteriophage.[123] In 1968 she underwent an emergency hysterectomy, which exacerbated her back problems and contributed to hip problems. Perhaps self-medicating, she was addicted to alcohol and prescription pain killers and tranquilizers. She was treated at the Betty Ford Center for seven weeks from December 1983 to January 1984, becoming the first celebrity to openly admit herself to the clinic.[8]: 424–425  She relapsed later in the decade and entered rehabilitation again in 1988.[1]: 366–368  Taylor also struggled with her weight – she became overweight in the 1970s, especially after her marriage to Senator John Warner, and published a diet book about her experiences, Elizabeth Takes Off (1988).[124][125] Taylor was a heavy smoker until she experienced a severe bout of pneumonia in 1990.[126] Taylor's health increasingly declined during the last two decades of her life and she rarely attended public events after 1996.[122] Taylor had serious bouts of pneumonia in 1990 and 2000,[68] two hip replacement surgeries in the mid-1990s,[65] a surgery for a benign brain tumor in 1997,[65] and successful treatment for skin cancer in 2002.[122] She used a wheelchair due to her back problems and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2004.[127][128] She died of the illness aged 79 on March 23, 2011, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, six weeks after being hospitalized.[129] Her funeral took place the following day at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The service was a private Jewish ceremony presided by Rabbi Jerome Cutler. At Taylor's request, the ceremony began 15 minutes behind schedule, as, according to her representative, "She even wanted to be late for her own funeral."[130] She was entombed in the cemetery's Great Mausoleum.[131] Audrey Kathleen Hepburn (née Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British[a] actress. Hepburn had a successful career in Hollywood and was recognised as a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend from the Classical Hollywood cinema and was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List. Born into an aristocratic family in Ixelles, Brussels, Hepburn spent parts of her childhood in Belgium, England and the Netherlands. She attended boarding school in Kent, England from 1936 to 1939. With the outbreak of World War II, she returned to the Netherlands.[3] During the war, Hepburn studied ballet at the Arnhem Conservatory and by 1944, she performed ballet to raise money to support the Dutch resistance.[4] Hepburn studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam beginning in 1945 and with Marie Rambert in London from 1948. She began performing as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions and then had minor appearances in several films. Hepburn rose to stardom in the romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953) alongside Gregory Peck, for which she was the first actress to win an Oscar, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Award for a single performance. That year, she also won a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance in Ondine. Hepburn went on to star in a number of successful films such as Sabrina (1954), in which Humphrey Bogart and William Holden compete for her affection; Funny Face (1957), a musical in which she sang her own parts; the drama The Nun's Story (1959); the romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961); the thriller-romance Charade (1963), opposite Cary Grant; and the musical My Fair Lady (1964). In 1967, she starred in the thriller Wait Until Dark, receiving Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. After that, Hepburn only occasionally appeared in films, one being Robin and Marian (1976) with Sean Connery. Her last recorded performances were in the 1990 documentary television series Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming. In 1994, Hepburn's contributions to a spoken-word recording titled Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales earned her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. She stands as one of few entertainers who have won competitive Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards known as EGOT. Hepburn won three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role. In recognition of her film career, she received BAFTA's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award and the Special Tony Award. Later in life, Hepburn devoted much of her time to UNICEF, to which she had contributed since 1954. Between 1988 and 1992, she worked in some of the poorest communities of Africa, South America and Asia. In December 1992, Hepburn received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. A month later, she died of appendix cancer at her home in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland at the age of 63.[5] Early life1929–1938: Family and early childhood Audrey Kathleen Ruston (later, Hepburn-Ruston[6]) was born on 4 May 1929 at number 48 Rue Keyenveld in Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels, Belgium.[7] She was known to her family as Adriaantje.[8] Hepburn's grandfather, Aarnoud van Heemstra, was the governor of the colony of Dutch Guiana. Hepburn's mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra (1900–1984), was a Dutch noblewoman. Ella was the daughter of Baron Aarnoud van Heemstra, who served as the mayor of Arnhem from 1910 to 1920 and as the governor of Dutch Guiana from 1921 to 1928, and Baroness Elbrig Willemine Henriette van Asbeck (1873–1939), a granddaughter of Count Dirk van Hogendorp.[9] At age 19, she married Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford—an oil executive based in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, where the couple subsequently lived.[10] Before divorcing in 1925, they had two sons, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander Quarles van Ufford (1920–1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (1924–2010).[7][11][12] Hepburn's father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889–1980), was a British subject born in Auschitz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. He was the son of Victor John George Ruston, who was of British and German-Austrian background, and Anna Juliana Franziska Karolina Wels, who was of German-Austrian origin and born in Kovarce.[13] In 1923–1924, he was an Honorary British Consul in Semarang, Dutch East Indies[14] and, prior to his marriage to Hepburn's mother, was married to Cornelia Bisschop, a Dutch heiress.[15] Joseph later changed his surname to the more "aristocratic" double-barrelled Hepburn-Ruston, perhaps at Ella's insistence,[16] as he mistakenly believed himself descended from James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.[b][17][18] Hepburn's parents were married in Batavia in 1926. At the time, Joseph worked for a trading company, but soon after the marriage, the couple moved to Europe, where he began working for a loan company; reportedly tin merchants MacLaine, Watson, and Company in London.[8] After a year in London, they moved to Brussels, where he had been assigned to open a branch office.[19] After three years spent traveling between Brussels, Arnhem, The Hague and London, the family settled in the suburban Brussels municipality of Linkebeek in 1932.[20] Hepburn's early childhood was sheltered and privileged.[10] Due to her father's job, the family travelled back and forth between three countries, enhancing her multinational background.[c][21] In the mid-1930s, Hepburn's parents recruited and collected donations for the British Union of Fascists (B.U.F).[22] Ella met Adolf Hitler and wrote favourable articles about him for the B.U.F.[23] Joseph left the family abruptly in 1935 after a "scene" in Brussels. He subsequently moved to London, where he became more deeply involved in the Fascist activity and never visited Hepburn abroad.[24] That same year, Ella moved to her family's estate in Arnhem with her daughter; her sons, Alex and Ian, were sent to The Hague to live with relatives. Joseph wanted Hepburn to be educated in the United Kingdom,[25] so in 1937, she was sent to live in Kent, where she, known as Audrey Ruston or "Little Audrey", was educated at a small private school in Elham.[25][26][27] Her parents officially divorced the next year.[28] Later in her life, she often spoke of the effect on a child of being "dumped" as "children need two parents";[29] she professed that her father's departure was "the most traumatic event of my life".[10][30] In the 1960s, Hepburn renewed contact with her father after locating him in Dublin through the Red Cross; she supported him financially until his death although he remained emotionally detached.[31] 1939–1945: Experiences during World War IISee also: Dutch famine of 1944–1945 After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Hepburn's mother moved her daughter back to Arnhem in the hope that, as during the First World War, the Netherlands would remain neutral and be spared a German attack. While there, Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945. She had begun taking ballet lessons during her last years at boarding school, and continued training in Arnhem under the tutelage of Winja Marova, becoming her "star pupil".[10] After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn used the name Edda van Heemstra, because an "English-sounding" name was considered dangerous during the German occupation. Her family was profoundly affected by the occupation, with Hepburn later stating that "had we known that we were going to be occupied for five years, we might have all shot ourselves. We thought it might be over next week… six months… next year… that's how we got through".[10] In 1942, her uncle, Otto van Limburg Stirum (husband of her mother's older sister, Miesje), was executed in retaliation for an act of sabotage by the resistance movement; while he had not been involved in the act, he was targeted due to his family's prominence in Dutch society.[10] These family events were the turning point in the attitude of Hepburn's mother, who had flirted with Nazism up to this point. Hepburn's half-brother Ian was deported to Berlin to work in a German labour camp, and her other half-brother Alex went into hiding to avoid the same fate.[10] "We saw young men put against the wall and shot, and they'd close the street and then open it, and you could pass by again... Don't discount anything awful you hear or read about the Nazis. It's worse than you could ever imagine."[10] —Hepburn on the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands After her uncle's death, Hepburn, Ella, and Miesje left Arnhem to live with her grandfather, Baron Aarnoud van Heemstra, in nearby Velp.[10] Around that time Hepburn gave silent dance performances that reportedly raised money for the Dutch resistance effort.[32] It was long believed that she participated in the Dutch resistance itself,[10] but in 2016 the Airborne Museum 'Hartenstein' reported that after extensive research it had not found any evidence of such activities.[33] A 2019 book by Robert Matzen provided evidence, based on Hepburn's personal statements, that she had supported the resistance by giving "underground concerts" to raise money, delivering the underground newspaper, and taking messages and food to downed Allied flyers hiding in the woodlands north of Velp.[34] She also volunteered at a hospital that was the center of resistance activities in Velp,[34] and, according to Hepburn, her family temporarily hid a British paratrooper in their home during the Battle of Arnhem.[35][36] In addition to other traumatic events, she witnessed the transportation of Dutch Jews to concentration camps, later stating that "more than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on the train. I was a child observing a child."[37] After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse, and Arnhem was subsequently heavily damaged during Operation Market Garden. During the 1944–45 Dutch famine, the Germans hindered or reduced the already limited food and fuel supplies to civilians in retaliation for Dutch railway strikes that were held to disrupt the occupation. Like others, Hepburn's family resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits,[38][39] a source of starchy carbohydrates; Dutch doctors provided recipes for using tulip bulbs throughout the famine.[40] Suffering from the effects of malnutrition, after the war ended Hepburn became gravely ill with jaundice, anaemia, oedema, and a respiratory infection. In October 1945, a letter from Ella asking for help was received by Micky Burn, a former lover and British Army officer with whom she had corresponded while he was a prisoner of war in Colditz Castle. He sent back thousands of cigarettes, which she was able to sell on the black market and thus buy the penicillin which saved Hepburn's life.[41][42][43] The Van Heemstra family's financial situation changed significantly through the occupation, during which time many of their properties (including their principal estate in Arnhem) were damaged or destroyed.[44] Entertainment career1945–1952: Ballet studies and early acting roles After the war ended in 1945, Hepburn moved with her mother and siblings to Amsterdam, where she began ballet training under Sonia Gaskell, a leading figure in Dutch ballet, and Russian teacher Olga Tarasova.[45] Due to the loss of the family fortune, Ella had to support them by working as a cook and housekeeper for a wealthy family.[46] Hepburn made her film debut playing an air stewardess in Dutch in Seven Lessons (1948), an educational travel film made by Charles van der Linden and Henry Josephson.[47] Newspaper clipping, March 9, 1952 Later that year, Hepburn moved to London after accepting a ballet scholarship with Ballet Rambert, which was then based in Notting Hill.[48][d] She supported herself with part-time work as a model, and dropped "Ruston" from her surname. After she was told by Rambert that despite her talent, her height and weak constitution (the after-effect of wartime malnutrition) would make the status of prima ballerina unattainable, she decided to concentrate on acting.[49][50][51] While Ella worked in menial jobs to support them, Hepburn appeared as a chorus girl[52] in the West End musical theatre revues High Button Shoes (1948) at the London Hippodrome, and Cecil Landeau's Sauce Tartare (1949) and Sauce Piquante (1950) at the Cambridge Theatre. Also, in 1950, she worked as a dancer in an exceptionally "ambitious" revue, Summer Nights, at Ciro's London, a prominent nightclub.[53] During her theatrical work, she took elocution lessons with actor Felix Aylmer to develop her voice.[54] After being spotted by the Ealing Studios casting director, Margaret Harper-Nelson, while performing in Sauce Piquante, Hepburn was registered as a freelance actress with the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC). She appeared in the BBC Television play The Silent Village,[55] and in minor roles in the films One Wild Oat, Laughter in Paradise, Young Wives' Tale, and The Lavender Hill Mob (all 1951). She was cast in her first major supporting role in Thorold Dickinson's Secret People (1952), as a prodigious ballerina, performing all of her own dancing sequences.[56] Hepburn then took a small role in a bilingual film, Monte Carlo Baby (French: Nous Irons à Monte Carlo, 1952), which was filmed in Monte Carlo. Coincidentally, French novelist Colette was at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo during the filming, and decided to cast Hepburn in the title role in the Broadway play Gigi.[57] Hepburn went into rehearsals having never spoken on stage, and required private coaching.[58] When Gigi opened at the Fulton Theatre on 24 November 1951, she received praise for her performance, despite criticism that the stage version was inferior to the French film adaptation.[59] Life called her a "hit",[59] while The New York Times stated that "her quality is so winning and so right that she is the success of the evening".[58] Hepburn also received a Theatre World Award for the role.[60] The play ran for 219 performances, closing on 31 May 1952,[60] before going on tour, which began 13 October 1952 in Pittsburgh and visited Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, D. C., and Los Angeles, before closing on 16 May 1953 in San Francisco.[10] 1953–1960: Roman Holiday and stardomHepburn in a screen test for Roman Holiday (1953) which was also used as promotional material for the film Hepburn had her first starring role in Roman Holiday (1953), playing Princess Ann, a European princess who escapes the reins of royalty and has a wild night out with an American newsman (Gregory Peck). On 18 September 1951, shortly after Secret People was finished but before its premiere, Thorold Dickinson made a screen test with the young starlet and sent it to director William Wyler, who was in Rome preparing Roman Holiday. Wyler wrote a glowing note of thanks to Dickinson, saying that "as a result of the test, a number of the producers at Paramount have expressed interest in casting her."[61] The producers of the film had initially wanted Elizabeth Taylor for the role, but Wyler was so impressed by Hepburn's screen test that he cast her instead. Wyler later commented, "She had everything I was looking for: charm, innocence, and talent. She also was very funny. She was absolutely enchanting, and we said, 'That's the girl!'"[62] Originally, the film was to have had only Gregory Peck's name above its title, with "Introducing Audrey Hepburn" beneath in smaller font. Peck suggested Wyler elevate her to equal billing so her name appears before the title, and in type as large as his: "You've got to change that because she'll be a big star, and I'll look like a big jerk."[63] The film was a box-office success, and Hepburn gained critical acclaim for her portrayal, unexpectedly winning an Academy Award for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award for Best British Actress in a Leading Role, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama in 1953. In his review in The New York Times, A. H. Weiler wrote: "Although she is not precisely a newcomer to films, Audrey Hepburn, the British actress who is being starred for the first time as Princess Anne, is a slender, elfin, and wistful beauty, alternately regal and childlike in her profound appreciation of newly-found, simple pleasures and love. Although she bravely smiles her acknowledgement of the end of that affair, she remains a pitifully lonely figure facing a stuffy future."[64] Hepburn with co-star William Holden in the film Sabrina (1954) Hepburn was signed to a seven-picture contract with Paramount, with 12 months in between films to allow her time for stage work.[65] She was featured on 7 September 1953 cover of Time magazine, and also became known for her personal style.[66] Following her success in Roman Holiday, Hepburn starred in Billy Wilder's romantic Cinderella-story comedy Sabrina (1954), in which wealthy brothers (Humphrey Bogart and William Holden) compete for the affections of their chauffeur's innocent daughter (Hepburn). For her performance, she was nominated for the 1954 Academy Award for Best Actress, while winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role the same year.[67] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times stated that she was "a young lady of extraordinary range of sensitive and moving expressions within such a frail and slender frame. She is even more luminous as the daughter and pet of the servants' hall than she was as a princess last year, and no more than that can be said."[68] Mel Ferrer and Hepburn in War and Peace (1956) Hepburn also returned to the stage in 1954, playing a water nymph who falls in love with a human in the fantasy play Ondine on Broadway. A critic for The New York Times commented that "somehow, Miss Hepburn is able to translate [its intangibles] into the language of the theatre without artfulness or precociousness. She gives a pulsing performance that is all grace and enchantment, disciplined by an instinct for the realities of the stage". Her performance won her the 1954 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play three days after she won the Academy Award for Roman Holiday, making her one of three actresses to receive the Academy and Tony Awards for Best Actress in the same year (the other two are Shirley Booth and Ellen Burstyn).[69] During the production, Hepburn and her co-star Mel Ferrer began a relationship, and were married on 25 September 1954 in Switzerland.[70] Publicity photo for Love in the Afternoon (1957) Although she appeared in no new film releases in 1955, Hepburn received the Golden Globe for World Film Favorite that year.[71] Having become one of Hollywood's most popular box-office attractions, she starred in a series of successful films during the remainder of the decade, including her BAFTA- and Golden Globe-nominated role as Natasha Rostova in War and Peace (1956), an adaptation of the Tolstoy novel set during the Napoleonic wars, starring Henry Fonda and her husband Mel Ferrer. She exhibited her dancing abilities in her debut musical film, Funny Face (1957), wherein Fred Astaire, a fashion photographer, discovers a beatnik bookshop clerk (Hepburn) who, lured by a free trip to Paris, becomes a beautiful model. Hepburn starred in another romantic comedy, Love in the Afternoon (also 1957), alongside Gary Cooper and Maurice Chevalier. Hepburn played Sister Luke in The Nun's Story (1959), which focuses on the character's struggle to succeed as a nun, alongside co-star Peter Finch. The role produced a third Academy Award nomination for Hepburn, and earned her a second BAFTA Award. A review in Variety reads: "Hepburn has her most demanding film role, and she gives her finest performance",[72] while Henry Hart in Films in Review stated that her performance "will forever silence those who have thought her less an actress than a symbol of the sophisticated child/woman. Her portrayal of Sister Luke is one of the great performances of the screen."[73] Hepburn spent a year researching and working on the role, saying, "I gave more time, energy, and thought to this role than to any of my previous screen performances".[74] Following The Nun's Story, Hepburn received a lukewarm reception for starring with Anthony Perkins in the romantic adventure Green Mansions (1959), in which she played Rima, a jungle girl who falls in love with a Venezuelan traveller,[75] and The Unforgiven (1960), her only western film, in which she appeared opposite Burt Lancaster and Lillian Gish in a story of racism against a group of Native Americans.[76] 1961–1967: Breakfast at Tiffany's and continued successHepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) Hepburn next starred as New Yorker Holly Golightly in Blake Edwards's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), a film loosely based on the Truman Capote novella of the same name. Capote disapproved of many changes that were made to sanitise the story for the film adaptation, and would have preferred Marilyn Monroe to have been cast in the role, although he also stated that Hepburn "did a terrific job".[77] The character is considered one of the best-known in American cinema, and a defining role for Hepburn.[78] The dress she wears during the opening credits has been considered an icon of the twentieth century, and perhaps the most famous "little black dress" of all time.[79][80][81][82] Hepburn stated that the role was "the jazziest of my career"[83] yet admitted: "I'm an introvert. Playing the extroverted girl was the hardest thing I ever did."[84] She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. The same year, Hepburn also starred in William Wyler's drama The Children's Hour (1961), in which she and Shirley MacLaine play teachers whose lives are destroyed after two pupils accuse them of being lesbians.[85][86] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times writes that the film "is not too well acted", with the exception of Hepburn, who "gives the impression of being sensitive and pure" of its "muted theme".[85] Variety magazine also compliments Hepburn's "soft sensitivity, marvelous projection and emotional understatement", adding that Hepburn and MacLaine "beautifully complement each other".[86] Hepburn in Charade (1963) Hepburn next appeared opposite Cary Grant in the comic thriller Charade (1963), playing a young widow pursued by several men who chase after the fortune stolen by her murdered husband. The 59-year-old Grant, who had previously withdrawn from the starring male lead roles in Roman Holiday and Sabrina, was sensitive about his age difference with 34-year-old Hepburn, and was uncomfortable about the romantic interplay. To satisfy his concerns, the filmmakers agreed to alter the screenplay so that Hepburn's character was pursuing him.[87] The film turned out to be a positive experience for him; he said, "All I want for Christmas is another picture with Audrey Hepburn."[88] The role earned Hepburn her third, and final, competitive BAFTA Award, and another Golden Globe nomination. Critic Bosley Crowther was less kind to her performance, stating that, "Hepburn is cheerfully committed to a mood of how-nuts-can-you-be in an obviously comforting assortment of expensive Givenchy costumes."[89] Although filmed in the summer of 1962 before Charade, Hepburn reunited with her Sabrina co-star William Holden in Paris When It Sizzles (1964), a screwball comedy in which she played the young assistant of a Hollywood screenwriter, who aids his writer's block by acting out his fantasies of possible plots. Its production was troubled by several problems. Holden unsuccessfully tried to rekindle a romance with the now-married Hepburn, and his alcoholism was beginning to affect his work. After principal photography began, she demanded the dismissal of cinematographer Claude Renoir after seeing what she felt were unflattering dailies.[90] Superstitious, she also insisted on dressing room 55 because that was her lucky number and required that Hubert de Givenchy, her long-time designer, be given a credit in the film for her perfume.[90] Dubbed "marshmallow-weight hokum" by Variety upon its release in April,[91] the film was "uniformly panned"[90] but critics were kinder to Hepburn's performance, describing her as "a refreshingly individual creature in an era of the exaggerated curve".[91] Hepburn with cinematographer Harry Stradling on the set of My Fair Lady (1964) Hepburn's second film released in 1964 was George Cukor's film adaptation of the stage musical My Fair Lady, which premiered in October.[92] Soundstage wrote that "not since Gone with the Wind has a motion picture created such universal excitement as My Fair Lady",[69] although Hepburn's casting in the role of Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle was a source of dispute. Julie Andrews, who had originated the role on stage, was not offered the part because producer Jack L. Warner thought Hepburn was a more "bankable" proposition. Hepburn initially asked Warner to give the role to Andrews but was eventually cast. Further friction was created when, although non-singer Hepburn had sung in Funny Face and had lengthy vocal preparation for the role in My Fair Lady, her vocals were dubbed by Marni Nixon, whose voice was considered more suitable to the role.[93][94] Hepburn was initially upset and walked off the set when informed.[e] Critics applauded Hepburn's performance. Crowther wrote that, "The happiest thing about [My Fair Lady] is that Audrey Hepburn superbly justifies the decision of Jack Warner to get her to play the title role."[93] Gene Ringgold of Soundstage also commented that, "Audrey Hepburn is magnificent. She is Eliza for the ages",[69] while adding, "Everyone agreed that if Julie Andrews was not to be in the film, Audrey Hepburn was the perfect choice."[69] The reviewer in Time magazine said her "graceful, glamorous performance" was "the best of her career".[95] Andrews won an Academy Award for Mary Poppins at the 1964 37th Academy Awards and Hepburn earned Best Actress nominations for Golden Globe and New York Film Critics Circle awards.[96] Hepburn appeared in an assortment of genres including the heist comedy How to Steal a Million (1966). Hepburn played the daughter of a famous art collector, whose collection consists entirely of forgeries that are about to be exposed as fakes. Her character plays the part of a dutiful daughter trying to help her father with the help of a man played by Peter O'Toole. The film was followed by two films in 1967. The first was Two for the Road, a non-linear and innovative British dramedy that traces the course of a couple's troubled marriage. Director Stanley Donen said that Hepburn was freer and happier than he had ever seen her, and he credited that to co-star Albert Finney.[97] The second, Wait Until Dark, is a suspense thriller in which Hepburn demonstrated her acting range by playing the part of a terrorised blind woman. Filmed on the brink of her divorce, it was a difficult film for her, as husband Mel Ferrer was its producer. She lost fifteen pounds under the stress, but she found solace in co-star Richard Crenna and director Terence Young. Hepburn earned her fifth and final competitive Academy Award nomination for Best Actress; Bosley Crowther affirmed, "Hepburn plays the poignant role, the quickness with which she changes and the skill with which she manifests terror attract sympathy and anxiety to her and give her genuine solidity in the final scenes."[98] 1968–1993: Semi-retirement and final projectsHepburn and Sean Connery in the film Robin and Marian (1976) After 1967, Hepburn chose to devote more time to her family and acted only occasionally. She attempted a comeback playing Maid Marian in the period piece Robin and Marian (1976) with Sean Connery co-starring as Robin Hood, which was moderately successful. Roger Ebert praised Hepburn's chemistry with Connery, writing, "Connery and Hepburn seem to have arrived at a tacit understanding between themselves about their characters. They glow. They really do seem in love. And they project as marvellously complex, fond, tender people; the passage of 20 years has given them grace and wisdom."[99] Hepburn reunited with director Terence Young in the production of Bloodline (1979), sharing top-billing with Ben Gazzara, James Mason, and Romy Schneider.[100] The film, an international intrigue amid the jet-set, was a critical and box-office failure. Hepburn's last starring role in a feature film was opposite Gazzara in the comedy They All Laughed (1981), directed by Peter Bogdanovich.[101] The film was overshadowed by the murder of one of its stars, Dorothy Stratten, and received only a limited release. Six years later, Hepburn co-starred with Robert Wagner in a made-for-television caper film, Love Among Thieves (1987).[102] After finishing her last motion picture role—a cameo appearance as an angel in Steven Spielberg's Always (1989)—Hepburn completed only two more entertainment-related projects, both critically acclaimed. Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn was a PBS documentary series, which was filmed on location in seven countries in the spring and summer of 1990. A one-hour special preceded it in March 1991, and the series itself began its national PBS premiere on 24 January 1993, the day of her funeral services in Tolochenaz. For the "Flower Gardens" episode, Hepburn was posthumously awarded the 1993 Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming. The other project was a spoken word album, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales, which features readings of classic children's stories and was recorded in 1992. It earned her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.[103] Humanitarian work In the 1950s, Hepburn narrated two radio programmes for UNICEF, re-telling children's stories of war.[104] In 1989, Hepburn was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF. On her appointment, she stated that she was grateful for receiving international aid after enduring the German occupation as a child, and wanted to show her gratitude to the organisation.[105] 1988–1992Hepburn receiving UNICEF's International Danny Kaye Award for Children in 1989. Hepburn's first field mission for UNICEF was to Ethiopia in 1988. She visited an orphanage in Mek'ele that housed 500 starving children and had UNICEF send food.[106] Of the trip, she said, I have a broken heart. I feel desperate. I can't stand the idea that two million people are in imminent danger of starving to death, many of them children, [and] not because there isn't tons of food sitting in the northern port of Shoa. It can't be distributed. Last spring, Red Cross and UNICEF workers were ordered out of the northern provinces because of two simultaneous civil wars... I went into rebel country and saw mothers and their children who had walked for ten days, even three weeks, looking for food, settling onto the desert floor into makeshift camps where they may die. Horrible. That image is too much for me. The 'Third World' is a term I don't like very much, because we're all one world. I want people to know that the largest part of humanity is suffering.[107] In August 1988, Hepburn went to Turkey on an immunisation campaign. She called Turkey "the loveliest example" of UNICEF's capabilities. Of the trip, she said, "The army gave us their trucks, the fishmongers gave their wagons for the vaccines, and once the date was set, it took ten days to vaccinate the whole country. Not bad."[106] In October, Hepburn went to South America. Of her experiences in Venezuela and Ecuador, Hepburn told the United States Congress, "I saw tiny mountain communities, slums, and shantytowns receive water systems for the first time by some miracle – and the miracle is UNICEF. I watched boys build their own schoolhouse with bricks and cement provided by UNICEF."[108] Hepburn toured Central America in February 1989, and met with leaders in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In April, she visited Sudan with Wolders as part of a mission called "Operation Lifeline". Because of civil war, food from aid agencies had been cut off. The mission was to ferry food to southern Sudan. Hepburn said, "I saw but one glaring truth: These are not natural disasters but man-made tragedies for which there is only one man-made solution – peace."[106] In October 1989, Hepburn and Wolders went to Bangladesh. John Isaac, a UN photographer, said, "Often the kids would have flies all over them, but she would just go hug them. I had never seen that. Other people had a certain amount of hesitation, but she would just grab them. Children would just come up to hold her hand, touch her – she was like the Pied Piper."[10] In October 1990, Hepburn went to Vietnam, in an effort to collaborate with the government for national UNICEF-supported immunisation and clean water programmes. In September 1992, four months before she died, Hepburn went to Somalia. Calling it "apocalyptic", she said, "I walked into a nightmare. I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this – so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn't prepared for this."[106] Though scarred by what she had seen, Hepburn still had hope stating: As we move into the twenty-first century, there is much to reflect upon. We look around us and see that the promises of yesterday have to come to pass. People still live in abject poverty, people are still hungry, people still struggle to survive. And among these people we see the children, always the children: their enlarged bellies, their sad eyes, their wise faces that show the suffering, all the suffering they have endured in their short years.[109] Recognition United States president George H. W. Bush presented Hepburn with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work with UNICEF, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences posthumously awarded her the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her contribution to humanity.[110][111] In 2002, at the United Nations Special Session on Children, UNICEF honoured Hepburn's legacy of humanitarian work by unveiling a statue, "The Spirit of Audrey", at UNICEF's New York headquarters. Her service for children is also recognised through the United States Fund for UNICEF's Audrey Hepburn Society.[112][113] Personal life and final yearsMultilingualism Alongside her native English and Dutch, Hepburn also had some fluency in French (which she learned at school in Belgium), German, Italian, and Spanish.[114] Throughout her life, Hepburn lived in many countries, including spending her childhood in Belgium, England, and the Netherlands, and her adult years in the United States, Italy, and Switzerland,[115] and traveled extensively during her later years of life as part of her humanitarian work with UNICEF.[116] Marriages, relationships, and childrenHepburn with husband Mel Ferrer in 1966 In 1952, Hepburn became engaged to industrialist James Hanson,[117] whom she had known since her early days in London. She called it "love at first sight", but after having her wedding dress fitted and the date set, she decided the marriage would not work because the demands of their careers would keep them apart most of the time.[118] She issued a public statement about her decision, saying "When I get married, I want to be really married".[119] In the early 1950s, she also dated future Hair producer Michael Butler.[120] Hepburn and her partner Robert Wolders at the White House in 1981 At a cocktail party hosted by mutual friend Gregory Peck, Hepburn met American actor Mel Ferrer, and suggested that they star together in a play.[69][121] The meeting led them to collaborate in Ondine, during which they began a relationship. Eight months later, on 25 September 1954, they were married in Bürgenstock, Switzerland,[122] while preparing to star together in the film War and Peace (1956). She and Ferrer had a son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, born on 17 June 1960.[123] Prior to Sean's birth, Hepburn had two other pregnancies that ended in miscarriages, the second one at six months.[115][123][124] Ferrer was rumoured to be too controlling, and had been referred to by others as being her "Svengali" – an idea that Hepburn laughed off. William Holden was quoted as saying, "I think Audrey allows Mel to think he influences her." After a 14-year marriage, the couple divorced in 1968.[125] Hepburn met her second husband, Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, on a Mediterranean cruise with friends in June 1968. She believed she would have more children and possibly stop working.[126][127] They married on 18 January 1969, and their son Luca Andrea Dotti was born on 8 February 1970.[123] While pregnant with Luca in 1969, Hepburn was more careful, resting for months before delivering the baby via caesarean section. Hepburn suffered a miscarriage in 1974.[123] Dotti and Hepburn were unfaithful, he with younger women and she with actor Ben Gazzara during the filming of Bloodline (1979).[128] The marriage lasted twelve years and was dissolved in 1982.[123][129] From 1980 until her death in 1993, Hepburn was in a relationship with Dutch actor Robert Wolders, the widower of actress Merle Oberon.[39] She had met Wolders through a friend during the later years of her second marriage. In 1989, she called the nine years she had spent with him the happiest years of her life, and stated that she considered them married, just not officially.[130] Illness and deathHepburn's grave in Tolochenaz, Switzerland Upon returning to Switzerland from Somalia in late September 1992, Hepburn developed abdominal pain. While initial medical tests in Switzerland had inconclusive results, a laparoscopy performed at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in early November revealed a rare form of abdominal cancer belonging to a group of cancers known as pseudomyxoma peritonei.[131] Having grown slowly over several years, the cancer had metastasised as a thin coating over her small intestine. After surgery, Hepburn began chemotherapy.[132] Hepburn and her family returned home to Switzerland to celebrate her last Christmas. As she was still recovering from surgery, she was unable to fly on commercial aircraft. Her long-time friend, fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy, arranged for socialite Rachel Lambert "Bunny" Mellon to send her private Gulfstream jet, filled with flowers, to take Hepburn from Los Angeles to Geneva. She spent her last days in hospice care at her home in Tolochenaz, Vaud, and was occasionally well enough to take walks in her garden, but gradually became more confined to bedrest.[133] On the evening of 20 January 1993, Hepburn died in her sleep at home. After her death, Gregory Peck recorded a tribute to Hepburn in which he recited the poem "Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore.[134] Funeral services were held at the village church of Tolochenaz on 24 January 1993. Maurice Eindiguer, the same pastor who wed Hepburn and Mel Ferrer and baptised her son Sean in 1960, presided over her funeral, while Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan of UNICEF delivered a eulogy. Many family members and friends attended the funeral, including her sons, partner Robert Wolders, half-brother Ian Quarles van Ufford, ex-husbands Andrea Dotti and Mel Ferrer, Hubert de Givenchy, executives of UNICEF, and fellow actors Alain Delon and Roger Moore.[135] Flower arrangements were sent to the funeral by Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Dutch royal family.[136] Later on the same day, Hepburn was interred at the Tolochenaz Cemetery.[137] Legacy Hepburn's legacy has endured long after her death. The American Film Institute named Hepburn third among the Greatest Female Stars of All Time. She is one of few entertainers who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards. She won a record three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role. In her last years, she remained a visible presence in the film world. She received a tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 1991 and she was a frequent presenter at the Academy Awards. She received the BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992.[138] She was the recipient of numerous posthumous awards including the 1993 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and competitive Grammy and Emmy Awards. In January 2009, Hepburn was named on The Times' list of the top 10 British actresses of all time.[138] In 2010, Emma Thompson opined that Hepburn "can't sing and she can't really act"; some people agreed, others disagreed.[139] Hepburn's son Sean later said "My mother would be the first person to say that she wasn't the best actress in the world. But she was a movie star."[140] Waxwork of Hepburn at Madame Tussauds, London She has been the subject of many biographies since her death including the 2000 dramatisation of her life titled The Audrey Hepburn Story which starred Jennifer Love Hewitt and Emmy Rossum as the older and younger Hepburn respectively.[141] Her son and granddaughter, Sean and Emma Ferrer, helped produce a biographical documentary directed by Helena Coan, entitled Audrey (2020). The film was released to positive reception.[142][143] Hepburn's image is widely used in advertising campaigns across the world. In Japan, a series of commercials used colourised and digitally enhanced clips of Hepburn in Roman Holiday to advertise Kirin black tea. In the United States, Hepburn was featured in a 2006 Gap commercial that used clips of her dancing from Funny Face, set to AC/DC's "Back in Black", with the tagline "It's Back – The Skinny Black Pant". To celebrate its "Keep it Simple" campaign, the Gap made a sizeable donation to the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund.[144] In 2012, Hepburn was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his best known artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires.[145] In 2013, a computer-manipulated representation of Hepburn was used in a television advert for the British chocolate bar Galaxy.[146][147] On 4 May 2014, Google featured a doodle on its homepage on what would have been Hepburn's 85th birthday.[148] Sean Ferrer founded the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund[149] in memory of his mother shortly after her death. The US Fund for UNICEF also founded the Audrey Hepburn Society: the Society hosted annual charity balls for fund raising until Ferrer became involved in lawsuits in the late 2010s on behalf of his mother's estate.[150][151] Dotti also became patron of the Pseudomyxoma Survivor charity, dedicated to providing support to patients of the rare cancer that was fatal to Hepburn, pseudomyxoma peritonei,[152] and Sean Ferrer became the rare disease ambassador since 2014 and for 2015 on behalf of European Organisation for Rare Diseases.[153] A year after his mother's death in 1993, Ferrer founded the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund (originally named Hollywood for Children Inc.),[154] a charity funded by exhibitions of Audrey Hepburn memorabilia. He directed the charity in cooperation with his half-brother Luca Dotti, and Robert Wolders, his mother's partner, which aimed to continue the humanitarian work of Audrey Hepburn.[155] Ferrer brought the exhibition "Timeless Audrey" on a world tour to raise money for the foundation.[156] He served as Chairman of the Fund before resigning in 2012, turning over the position to Dotti.[157] In 2017, Ferrer was sued by the Fund for alleged self-serving conduct.[157] In October 2017, Ferrer responded by suing the Fund for trademark infringement, claiming that the Fund no longer had the right to use Hepburn's name or likeness.[154] Ferrer's suit against the Fund was dismissed in March 2018 due to the complaint's failure to include Dotti as a defendant.[158] In 2019, the court sided with Ferrer, with the judge ruling there was no merit to the charity's claims it had the independent right to use Audrey Hepburn's name and likeness, or to enter into contracts with third parties without Ferrer's consent.[150][151] Hepburn's son Sean said that he was brought up in the countryside as a normal child, not in Hollywood and without a Hollywood state of mind that makes movie stars and their families lose touch with reality. There was no screening room in the house. He said that his mother didn't take herself seriously, and used to say, "I take what I do seriously, but I don't take myself seriously".[140]

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