Weekend Economists: "So much to do, so little done, such things to be." April 20-22, 2012

[Demeter]

2. Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE

(February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age. As one of the world's most famous film stars, Taylor was recognized for her acting ability and for her glamorous lifestyle, beauty and distinctive violet eyes.

National Velvet (1944) was Taylor's first success, and she starred in Father of the Bride (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for BUtterfield 8 (1960), played the title role in Cleopatra (1963), and married her co-star Richard Burton. They appeared together in 11 films, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which Taylor won a second Academy Award. From the mid-1970s, she appeared less frequently in film, and made occasional appearances in television and theatre.

Her much publicized personal life included eight marriages and several life-threatening illnesses. From the mid-1980s, Taylor championed HIV and AIDS programs; she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985, and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1993. She received the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Legion of Honour, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, who named her seventh on their list of the "Greatest American Screen Legends". Taylor died of congestive heart failure in March 2011 at the age of 79, having suffered many years of ill health.

Early life

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born at Heathwood, her parents' home at 8 Wildwood Road in Hampstead Garden Suburb, a northwestern suburb of London; the younger of two children of Francis Lenn Taylor (1897–1968) and Sara Sothern (née Sara Viola Warmbrodt; 1895–1994), who were Americans residing in England. Taylor's older brother, Howard Taylor, was born in 1929. Her parents were originally from Arkansas City, Kansas. Francis Taylor was an art dealer, and Sara was a former actress whose stage name was "Sara Sothern". Sothern retired from the stage in 1926 when she married Francis in New York City. Taylor's two first names are in honor of her paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Mary (Rosemond) Taylor.

Colonel Victor Cazalet, one of their closest friends, had an important influence on the family. He was a rich, well-connected bachelor, a Member of Parliament and close friend of Winston Churchill. Cazalet loved both art and theater and was passionate when encouraging the Taylor family to think of England as their permanent home. Additionally, as a Christian Scientist and lay preacher, his links with the family were spiritual. He also became Elizabeth's godfather. In one instance, when she was suffering with a severe infection as a child, she was kept in her bed for weeks. She "begged" for his company: "Mother, please call Victor and ask him to come and sit with me."

Biographer Alexander Walker suggests that Elizabeth's conversion to Judaism at the age of 27 and her life-long support for Israel, may have been influenced by views she heard at home. Walker notes that Cazalet actively campaigned for a Jewish homeland, and her mother also worked in various charities, which included sponsoring fundraisers for Zionism....

A dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, she was born British, through her birth on British soil and an American citizen through her parents. She reportedly sought, in 1965, to renounce her United States citizenship, to wit: "Though never accepted by the State Department, Elizabeth renounced in 1965. Attempting to shield much of her European income from U.S. taxes, Elizabeth wished to become solely a British citizen. According to news reports at the time, officials denied her request when she failed to complete the renunciation oath, refusing to say that she renounced "all allegiance to the United States of America."

At the age of three, Taylor began taking ballet lessons. Shortly before the beginning of World War II, her parents decided to return to the United States to avoid hostilities. Her mother took the children first, arriving in New York in April 1939, while her father remained in London to wrap up matters in his art business, arriving in November. They settled in Los Angeles, California, where her father established a new art gallery, which included many paintings he shipped from England. The gallery would soon attract numerous Hollywood celebrities who appreciated its modern European paintings. According to Walker, the gallery "opened many doors for the Taylors, leading them directly into the society of money and prestige" within Hollywood's movie colony.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Taylor