Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE is a two-time Academy Award-winning English-American actress. Known for her acting skills and beauty, as well as her Hollywood lifestyle, including many marriages, she is considered one of the great actresses of Hollywood’s golden years, as well as a larger-than-life celebrity.
The American Film Institute named Taylor seventh among the Greatest Female Stars of All Time.
Biography
The early years: 1932–1942
Main article: Elizabeth Taylor filmography and various appearances
Taylor was born in Hampstead, a wealthy district of north-west London, the second child of Francis Lenn Taylor and Sara Viola Warmbrodt , who were Americans residing in England. Taylor's older brother, Howard Taylor, was born in 1929. Her two first names are in honor of her paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Mary Taylor. Taylor was born both a British subject and an American citizen, the former by being born on British soil under the principle of jus soli, and the latter through her parents under the principle of jus sanguinis.
Both of her American parents were originally from Arkansas City, Kansas. Her father was an art dealer and her mother a former actress whose stage name was Sara Sothern. Sara retired from the stage when she and Francis Taylor married in 1926 in New York.
At the age of three, Elizabeth began taking ballet lessons with Vaccani. Shortly after the beginning of World War II, her parents decided to return to the United States to avoid hostilities. Her mother took the children first, while her father remained in London to wrap up matters in the art business. They settled in Los Angeles, California, where Sara's family, the Warmbrodts, were then living.
The Taylors climbed the proverbial social ladder with far greater ease in Hollywood than they had in London. Among some of Francis Taylor's earliest clientele in his Beverly Hills Hotel art gallery were some of Hollywood's leading stars, among them Howard Duff, Vincent Price, James Mason, Alan Ladd and Greta Garbo
