Seven bold and eight attempts: all Elizabeth Taylor’s loving husbands

heir to the empire

Taylor married for the first time on May 6, 1950 at the age of 18, but already an experienced actress with ten films under her belt. Conrad Hilton Nicholas Jr. became her chosen one, a spectacular wedding took place for more than 700 guests. Conrad (also known as Nikki) was the heir to the Hilton hotel empire and was notoriously frivolous.

Everything would be fine, but in January 1951 the couple suddenly announced their separation. This became a public scandal and streams of mud were thrown at Elizabeth Taylor. The reason for the gap was Hilton’s attack, which Taylor could not forgive. According to unconfirmed reports, due to the beatings and experiences, Liz even miscarried. Hilton had to make amends with a decent amount (about a million dollars) and subsequently Liz often referred to this marriage as a mistake.

Nikki Hilton’s life has not been the best. In 1960 he married for the second time – to Patricia McClintock, the couple had two children, but in 1964 he divorced again. On February 5, 1969, he died of a heart attack caused by alcoholism. He was 42 years old and had never had to run a hotel chain – his father outlived him by almost a decade.

In the same year, Taylor met actor Michael Wilding, who was almost 20 years her senior. He was married at the time, but Elizabeth managed to find him a job in Hollywood, after which he immediately divorced and married her on February 21, 1952 in Los Angeles.

This marriage lasted five years, during which Liz managed to star in ten films and give birth to two sons – Michael Howard and Christopher Edward. Then they divorced, because the actress fell in love again, and they had almost no common interests with Wilding.

Wilding married twice more and stopped acting in the 1960s due to epileptic seizures. He died in 1979 after hitting his head falling down the stairs.

The new lover of actress Michael Todd was 23 years older than her. They met in 1956 when Taylor was still married. They married three days after her divorce and gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth Frances, in the same year, 1957.

Thanks to Todd, the number of roles offered to the actress increased dramatically, she began to refuse what did not interest her.

This marriage lasted only a year – on March 22, 1959, Michael died in the crash of the twin-engine plane The Liz (“Liz”) in New Mexico. Taylor was filming Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the time and was unprepared for the hit.

After the death of her husband, Liz fell into alcoholism and began to look for a new support in a man’s face. Singer and actor Eddie Fisher, 4 years older, became such a support. At that time, he was married to actress Debbie Reynolds, but this fact did not stop the lovers. Accepting the loss of her reputation as a grieving widow, Elizabeth earned the nickname “the family wrecker” and married Eddie on 12 May 1959.

Everything was going well, the couple was perfect for each other, but Taylor didn’t hold back and started an affair again. After the split, Fisher was married twice more, dying in 2010 of complications from surgery.

During the filming of Cleopatra (1963), Elizabeth began dating actor Richard Burton. The novel immediately went public and brought a lot of money to the Cleopatra rental company.

This time, Taylor decided to do it smartly: she demanded joint filming (the couple starred in 11 films), they constantly traveled together. Elizabeth and Richard were welcomed everywhere… but his addiction to alcohol and women could not go unnoticed.

Taylor forgave her husband many times, and he gave her expensive jewelry and promised to never look left again. They divorced in 1974, Burton went to Switzerland. And a few months later he reappeared in Liz’s life and promised not to drink anymore.

She believed and forgave, they even remarried, but it didn’t help: in 1976 they broke up for good. After that, Burton married twice more and died on February 5, 1984 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Taylor married for the seventh time in 1977 to politician John Warner. She helped him become a senator from Virginia and fell into alcoholism herself.

Career went down, Taylor was less and less invited to act, so alcohol and sweets became her friends. Her husband was busy with political affairs, so Liz had to deal with it herself. She was even in a clinic where she was being treated for addiction. They divorced in 1982.

For the next few years, the actress struggled with her habits, until in 1988 she met the owner of a construction company, Larry Fortensky, who was 20 years her junior. This marriage lasted five years: Taylor began to have health problems and her husband did not want to take care of her. After her divorce in 1996, Elizabeth lived her life alone.

In recent years, she was haunted by constant illnesses: she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, had pneumonia several times, and was confined to a wheelchair due to back problems. The actress died on March 23, 2011 of heart failure. Was she happy? Certainly yes, but certainly not in recent years.