10 fascinating facts about Elizabeth Taylor

1. Elizabeth Taylor became the first actress to be paid $1 million dollars for her role in Cleopatra. She said: "If someone’s dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I’m certainly not dumb enough to turn it down."

She famously met Richard Burton on set and the pair began their legendary affair.

2. "Liz and Dick’s" first marriage lasted from 1964 to 1974; their second lasted only a year, from 1975 until 1976. Elizabeth said they would have married a third time if he hadn’t died in 1984, aged 58.

Their love letters reveal a red-hot romance that was too all-consuming to last.

"With Richard Burton," she wrote, "I was living my own fabulous, passionate fantasy."

He described her as a "wildly exciting lover-mistress" who was "beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography".

3. In 1961, shortly after filming BUtterfield 8, Elizabeth contracted pneumonia and at one point her then husband Eddie Fisher was told she was an hour from death. An emergency tracheotomy saved her life, although one news agency reported that she had died. Her scar was visible at that year’s Oscars, where she picked up her first Academy Award for the film, causing Shirley MacLaine to quip, "I lost to a tracheotomy".

Elizabeth later won a second Oscar for her standout role as Martha in the 1966 film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

4. Elizabeth was born in England with scoliosis; her back condition was made worse after a fall from the horse she was riding for the film National Velvet. She did not have a stunt double. However, Elizabeth loved the horse, named King Charles, and MGM studio boss Louis B Mayer gave it to her as a 13th birthday gift.

5. Baby Maggie’s first word, "Daddy", which featured in season four of The Simpsons, was voiced by Elizabeth. Producer Mike Reiss later admitted, "She had to do six takes because, as you can imagine, it kept coming out too sexy. We had to remind her she was a baby talking to her father, not hitting on him."

6. Elizabeth was raised as a Christian Scientist but converted to Judaism in 1959. But contrary to rumour, she insisted, "Judaism had absolutely nothing to do with my past marriage to Mike or my upcoming marriage to Eddie Fisher, both of whom were Jewish.

"It was something I had wanted to do for a long time." Her Jewish name was Elisheba Rachel.

7. In 1987, Elizabeth became a celebrity entrepreneur when she released Passion, a hugely popular fragrance. In 1991 she followed it up with White Diamonds, which would become one of the most successful fragrances of all time. By 2018 it had racked up more than $1.5 billion in sales.

8. In 1956 the actress saved the life of Montgomery Clift, her A Place in the Sun co-star, when he crashed his car into a telephone pole after leaving her house in thick fog following a party. She raced to the wreck and pulled out the broken teeth on which he was choking.

9. Construction worker Larry Fortensky became her last and most unlikely husband in 1991. They were married for five years. He said in a 2011 interview, "I could always tell when she was coming downstairs because her jewels would rattle. I was always waiting for Elizabeth. She was always late."

10. Famous for her striking violet eyes and thick eyelashes, Elizabeth actually had a double set of lashes that are thought to be the result of a genetic disorder known medically as distichiasis. In 1976 she won the title of ‘Most Memorable Eyebrows’ in a magazine poll. The first runner up was Lassie.