For Dame Liz, as for the bard, life was but a stage
Divorced, remarried, died and survived. It is an achievement of sorts for a woman to be able to lay claim to the sort of spousal mnemonic associated with a Tudor brute, and without any recourse to beheading. But it must be admitted that the life of Elizabeth Taylor ? which stretched from the second world war's silver screen through to Twitter, before coming to a close yesterday ? was frequently chaotic, sometimes unhappily so. Known as a child to Hollywood's great gossip, Hedda Hopper, the London-born star had an instinct for feeding the media beast, at a time when the now world-conquering celebrity culture was still the exclusive preserve of tinsel town. Having stared into her violet eyes as a child star, cinema goers of her own generation felt an almost parental concern in reading about her later travails. In dying better known for the pills, thrills and heartaches than her performances, she might be said to have been ahead of her time. There is, however, a real distinction between Taylor and contemporary obsessions, such as Chantelle from Big Brother ? namely, a measure of talent. She was not always brilliant, but occasionally was, most often when tasked with playing a real woman with real problems, such as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She could be weirdly compelling even when below par, as when playing Cleopatra opposite Richard Burton, the man she would later twice marry. For Dame Liz, as for the bard, life was but a stage.
Sunderland Simon Cowell Regulators North-west Democrats Food and drink
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