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Gay News: Actress, AIDS campaigner and gay icon Dame Elizabeth Taylor has died.
She was proudest of her AIDS work
Liz Taylor is dead
23 March 2011
The 79-year-old actress died at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on 23 March of congestive heart failure, just one of the many health issues she had suffered for much of her life. She was surrounded by her four children.
The actress who was born in London’s Hampstead to American parents, and who held dual UK and American nationality, started acting in the movies at the age of nine in 1941.
She shot to international fame in National Velvet at the age of twelve, and in 1960 became the highest-paid actress in the world for her eponymous role as Cleopatra in which she starred opposite her husband-to-be Richard Burton.
Famous equally for her beauty and her eight marriages – she married Richard Burton twice – she won two Best Actress Oscars for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, and was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1999.
But it was her work in AIDS awareness and prevention that she was proudest of.
In the early eighties she used her fame to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS, and following the death in 1985 of her friend, actor Rock Hudson, from AIDS-related illness, she formed the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).
She also started her own foundation, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF), and worked tirelessly towards funding research for a cure to the end of her life.
It has been estimated that between them amfAR and ETAF have raise over $270 million in the fight against AIDS.
Speaking of her AIDS work, she said:
“I hope with all my heart that in some way I have made a difference in the lives of people with AIDS. I want that to be my legacy. Better than the mole on my cheek.”
