LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, the
violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen life was often upstaged
by her stormy personal life, died Wednesday at age 79.
She died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center, where she had been hospitalized for about six weeks,
publicist Sally Morrison said.
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Elizabeth Taylor (AP-Yonhap News) |
``All her children were with her,'' Morrison said.
Taylor had extraordinary grace, fame and wealth, and won three
Oscars, including a special one for her humanitarian work. But she
was tortured by ill health, failed romances and personal tragedy.
``I think I'm becoming fatalistic,'' she said in 1989. ``Too much
has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic.''
Her eight marriages _ including two to actor Richard Burton _ and
a lifelong battle with substance abuse, physical ailments and
overeating made Taylor as popular in supermarket tabloids as in
classic film festivals.
Taylor disclosed in November 2004 that she had congestive heart
failure. But she still periodically dismissed reports that she was
at death's door, saying she used a wheelchair only because of
chronic back problems that began at age 12 when she fell from a
horse.
``Oh, come on, do I look like I'm dying?'' she said in May 2006
in a rare television interview on CNN's ``Larry King Live.'' ``Do I
look like or sound like I have Alzheimer's?'' Tabloids report such
things ``because they have nothing else dirty to write about anybody
else,'' she said.
When she turned 75 the following year, she was asked about the
secret to her longevity and quipped: ``Hangin' in.''
The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a
divorcee at 18, a screen goddess at 19 and a widow at 26.
She appeared in more than 50 films, and won Oscars for her
performances in ``Butterfield 8'' (1960) and ``Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?'' (1966), in which she starred opposite Burton.
In later years, she was a spokeswoman for several causes, most
notably AIDS research. Her work gained her a special Oscar, the Jean
Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993.
As she accepted it, she told a worldwide television audience: ``I
call upon you to draw from the depths of your being _ to prove that
we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to
hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to
blame.''
She accepted her many health problems with a stoic attitude.
``My body's a real mess,'' Taylor told W magazine in 2004. ``If
you look at it in the mirror, it's just completely convex and
concave.''
<관련기사>
`세기의 미녀' 엘리자베스 테일러 타계
(워싱턴=연합뉴스) 황재훈 특파원 = `세기의 여우(女優)'로 한 시대를 풍미했던 미국 할리우드의 전설적인 여배우 엘리자베스 테일러가 23일 숨졌다. 향년 79세.
테일러의 대변인인 샐리 모리슨은 성명을 통해 리즈(엘리자베스의 애칭) 테일러가 이날 로스앤젤레스(LA)에서 울혈성 심부전증으로 숨졌다고 발표했다.
모리슨은 "고인이 LA의 시더-시나이 병원에서 오늘 평화롭게 숨졌다"면서 "그녀의 모든 자녀들이 임종을 지켰다"고 밝혔다.
그는 "고인이 최근 여러 합병증으로 고생해 왔지만 상태가 안정적이어서, 집으로 돌아갈 수 있을 것으로 기대했지만 애석하게도 그렇게 되지 못했다"고 말했다.
이에 앞서 테일러는 지난 2004년부터 앓아온 울혈성 심부전증 증상으로 지난달 이 병원에 입원해 그동안 6주가량 치료를 받아왔다.
테일러는 1997년 뇌종양 제거 수술, 2009년 심장판막 수술을 받기도 했다.
고인은 1960년 `버터필드8'과 1966년 `누가 버지니아 울프를 두려워하랴'로 두차례 아카데미 여우주연상을 수상했으며, 인도주의적 활동으로 특별상을 받기도 했다.
하지만 고인의 사생활은 순탄치 만은 않았다. 고인은 지금까지 영국 배우 리처드 버튼과의 두 번의 결혼을 비롯해 여덟차례나 결혼했다.
고인은 생전인 지난 1989년 한 인터뷰에서 "너무 많은 것들이 내 인생에서 벌어졌다"고 말하기도 했다.
