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Hollywood golden era star Elizabeth Taylor was known for her radiant beauty, classic film performances and eight marriages to seven husbands.
Born February 27, 1932 in north London to American parents, Taylor moved as a child with her family to Hollywood, where her father opened an art gallery that was often visited by the the film world's elite.
Taylor's beauty attracted attention and she was soon appearing in films.
MGM got her career moving at age 11 with Lassie Come Home (1943).
After many months of harsh training by her mother, a former actress, Taylor was cast in National Velvet (1944), playing a girl who wins the Grand National disguised as a boy.
By 17 she was playing her first "adult" role in Conspirator (1949).
She married for the first time in 1950, to playboy Hilton heir Nicky Hilton.
The marriage lasted only eight months, with Taylor claiming Hilton ignored her on their honeymoon, was regularly drunk and abused her in public.
The divorce did little to hinder teenage Taylor's career.
After meeting and courting Michael Wilding she proposed to him in England while filming Ivanhoe (1952).
They married at a London registry office and had two sons, Michael and Christopher.
From her third marriage, to film producer Mike Todd (who died in a plane crash in 1958), Taylor had a daughter, Liza. She adopted a daughter, Maria, from Germany in 1964 towards the end of her marriage to singer Eddie Fisher.
Taylor's fifth husband Richard Burton, whom she married and divorced twice, later adopted her daughters.
In 1958 Taylor starred in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and received her second Oscar nomination for her role as Maggie Pollitt.
Two years later she finally won an Oscar, for Butterfield 8.
The 1963 epic Cleopatra was the most expensive film made up to that point and Taylor's $1 million salary made her the first ever million dollar actress.
She won an Academy Award for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), but never reached the same blockbuster success.
However, that didn't stop her from acting. Taylor was credited in about 20 films and 15 series and TV movies in the 35 years up to 2001.
Taylor's health began to decline from 1997 after the surgical removal of a brain tumour.
She died on March 23, 2011 from congestive heart failure, aged 79. She was survived by her four children, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
