Elizabeth Taylor: Remembering a Legend Who Defied Expectations by Being Herself

I was honored to be invited by Miss En Scene to participate in the #ChoosetoChallengeCinema month-long event to celebrate and explore how some women challenged inequality, gender bias, and inequity in cinema. My focus is on the actress Elizabeth Taylor who often demonstrated these ideas through her film roles.

There are a handful of women I was considering focusing on for this event. One of the deciding factors that made me land on Elizabeth Taylor is that there are now 20-somethings who were not alive during her acting years – especially if you don’t count her appearance in the live action The Flintstones movie. Beyond that you’d have to go back to the ‘70s for any serious work by her. Being someone who grew up during the last 31 years of her life with her Golden Age legacy looming over that period, I could not stand the idea that people may not be aware of her anymore.

This is an actress who the American Film Institute once named the 7th greatest actress of all time. Someone who won 2 Academy Awards, was nominated for 3 additional Oscars, and was the recipient of numerous Lifetime Achievement and Humanitarian awards. She is one of the few child actors to have a successful career as an adult. And 9 of her films were nominated by the Academy for Best Picture. Her films’ worldwide aggregate box office is over $633.5 million!

What’s notable about Elizabeth Taylor is the sense of independence, individuality and fighting spirit in her roles. This was apparently true of her off-screen, as well. In a 1987 Rolling Stone interview, Taylor revealed she would go toe-to-toe with studio giant Louis B. Mayer, rebelling against his pre-fabrication leanings and control. The studio wanted to pluck her eyebrows and dye her hair to something more fashionable of the time – even change her name to Virginia. She was a teen at this time. Taylor and her parents put a stop to it all. She was born a certain way and was confident in how she was made; nobody was going to change that.

Eventually, this self-confidence and rejection of what was expected of her translated to the parts she played. Her breakout role was in National Velvet when she was 12. She played a girl whose passion for horse riding would lead her to masquerade as a male jockey and win a race. When she was 18 she starred as a pending bride in the original Father of the Bride. This helped transition her career to adulthood. She could have continued playing in fluffy comedies or standard female roles. Instead she chose to play the socialite who would motivate a man to murder in A Place in the Sun the next year.

It was 1956’s Giant where I was first exposed to Taylor’s work. I quickly sat up and took notice as her socialite character Leslie refused to conform to men’s expectations of her and fought to be treated as an equal on her husband’s half-million acre Texas ranch. It was incredibly progressive and feminist for the Eisenhower era. I was blown away.

In 1958 she starred in Richard Brooks’ adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a story about a wealthy family and a son (Paul Newman) who failed to live up to expectations, least of all because of his closeted homosexuality, a note that is hinted at subtly in the film. Taylor played the son’s wife, Maggie, a sexy and empathetic character who loves the family’s patriarch (Burl Ives), wants the two to reconcile before the father dies of inoperable cancer, and wants her husband to let go of the past and love what’s right in front of him. “Skipper is dead. I’m alive! Maggie the cat is alive!” is one of the most famous lines of Taylor’s career. She would not be ignored. The role of Maggie was a juicy part and continued making Taylor one of the most interesting actresses of the Golden Age.

The last role I wanted to highlight here is from 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Taylor was 32 and relished the opportunity and challenge of playing a 55-year-old boozed-out wife of a university professor and daughter of the university’s president. A big part of her image, despite her protests and dismissals, were her glamorous looks. With Virginia Woolf? she got to undercut that by applying folds under her eyes, gaining 20 pounds, and wearing additional rubber padding. She also got to be wickedly vile and cutting in her performance, berating, baiting, and humiliating her on-screen and real-life husband Richard Burton in front of company (George Segal and Sandy Dennis). It is an extraordinary performance that Taylor carefully modulated despite claiming to have winged it.

These are the films I wanted to highlight of Taylor’s career that illustrate how she challenged gender biases and expectations in film. Her characters are bold, determined, independent, and full of fight.

It must be noted that Elizabeth was also an extraordinary philanthropist, donating and raising over $270 million towards AIDS research and patient care. She also urged President Reagan to publicly acknowledge the disease and criticized Presidents Bush and Clinton for seeming indifferent to it. She was one of the first celebrities to participate in AIDS/HIV activism. She also suffered most of her life from physical ailments, having chronic back issues from an injury on National Velvet, which contributed to her addiction to alcohol and pain meds. Taylor was the first celebrity to openly admit herself to the Betty Ford Clinic. All of this and relationship scandals, too. Elizabeth Taylor was unafraid to be herself, warts and all, despite how it may affect her public image.

She died of heart failure 10 years ago on the 23rd of this month.

Elizabeth Taylor is one of the most interesting and greatest actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood and should never be forgotten or overlooked by future generations.

You’ll find her work currently on the following streaming services:

HBO Max

Life With Father (1947)

Little Women (1949)

Father of the Bride (1950)

Giant (1956)

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

BUtterfield 8 (1960)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)

Amazon Prime

Life With Father (1947)

Father’s Little Dividend (1951)

A Place in the Sun (1951)

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

Check out also my eulogy of Elizabeth Taylor upon news of her death.