Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, dead at age 79
Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor passed away today, Wednesday, March 23, 2011, at the age of 79. An advocate for AIDS research, Taylor was a friend to the local Whitman-Walker Clinic, whose medical center at 1701 14th St. NW bears her name.
IMDB notes that Taylor was “considered one of the last, if not the last major star, to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system.”
Among her greatest roles: Martha in the screen adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the titular character in the lavish, epic spectacle, Cleopatra, “call girl” Gloria in Butterfield 8, and Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Reporting for People Magazine, Stephen M. Silverman writes:
Elizabeth Taylor, the Hollywood icon and Oscar-winner who was practically born in the spotlight, has died. She was 79.
“She was surrounded by her children — Michael Wilding, Christopher Wilding, Liza Todd and Maria Burton,” Taylor’s publicist, Sally Morrison, said in a statement. In addition to her children, Taylor is survived by 10 grand children and four great grandchildren.
On Feb. 11, it was announced that she had been in taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles earlier that week for symptoms caused by congestive heart failure, and she “peacefully died there,” according to her publicist. “Though she had recently suffered a number of complications, her condition had stabilized and it was hoped that she would be able to return home. Sadly, this was not to be.”
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