Last page turns in story of Elizabeth Taylor's life

THE lights of Hollywood have dimmed with the death of Dame Elizabeth Taylor, one of the last leading ladies of a golden era.

The actress, who lit up the silver screen with her beauty and captivated audiences with her personal story of love and heartbreak, lost her long battle with ill health yesterday, aged 79.

The Oscar-winning star died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles from congestive heart failure, a condition first diagnosed seven years ago.

Tributes were paid yesterday by Dame Elizabeth's family, actors who grew up admiring her portrayals of grace, beauty, and strength, and friends from the US to Scotland.

Her son Michael Wilding, one of her four children, said: "We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for her having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts."

Dame Elizabeth entered the public eye when she was a child, and would remain there for the rest of her life. As well as watching her rise to fame through the studio system, the world witnessed her endure a lifetime's worth of sadness and success in the space of little over a quarter century. She was a star at the age of 12, a bride and divorcee at 18, a superstar at 19, and a widow by her 26th year.

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It was a drama that played out for decades to come. She would win three Academy Awards, one for her humanitarian work, and attract a lifelong devotion and loyalty from a wide circle of friends. A sense of doom, however, haunted her romantic life, with eight marriages and seven husbands, and her health suffered a slow and painful decline.

Her turbulent journey found its way into her performances, which portrayed a woman at once vulnerable and as tough as the diamonds she so adored.

As veteran film-maker Michael Winner put it: "Elizabeth Taylor was the last of the great glamour stars. She was the longest-running soap opera in history, and represented all the allure and tragedy that attracts people to Hollywood."

Born in Hampstead, north London, on 27 February 1932 to American parents, Taylor demonstrated a flair for showbusiness at an early age.

Her family having moved to Hollywood, she signed to Universal at the age of nine, making her debut in There's One Born Every Minute the next year.Even so, the studio's production chief, Edward Mohl, expressed doubts, commenting: "She can't sing, she can't dance, she can't perform."

Universal's loss, however, was MGM's gain. In 1943, her turn in Lassie Come Home launched her career, closely followed by one of her most famous roles as Velvet Brown in National Velvet. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she shone in a series of acclaimed roles, rivalled only by Marilyn Monroe for the status of Hollywood's premiere sex symbol.

By the 1960s, the woman with the raven hair and violet eyes seemed to embody the wider feelings of liberation and sexual awakening. Dame Elizabeth became the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, earning in excess of $1m per film. She would make more than 50 films, winning Academy Awards for performances in Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?

The advent of the 1960s, meanwhile, also heralded the greatest love affair of her life, when she met Richard Burton during the filming of 1963's Cleopatra.

Their romance captivated the world and she once declared: "If Richard and I divorce, I swear I will never marry anyone again. I love him insanely."

They divorced in 1974 after ten years, only to remarry the following year, before divorcing once more in 1976. They were reunited on stage in a 1982 touring production of Noel Coward's Private Lives and were close until Burton's death two years later.

Scottish publicist Liz Smith, who was married to Burton's godson Brook Williams, who died of cancer in 2005, spoke by telephone to the actress at Christmas.

"Elizabeth was the most precious and special friend that anyone could wish for," she told The Scotsman. "She was overwhelmingly generous, funny, kind, loving and immensely loyal to all her friends.

"She sparkled throughout her life, and I will miss her dreadfully as will all her family and everybody who was close to her. There are not many truly amazing women like her."