Elizabeth Taylor Quotes, Quips and Clips

• Source of quotes.
• Wikipedia's biography.
• A suitably trashy bio.
• Socialist eulogy. Elizabeth Taylor and the melodrama of American life in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Peculiar Beauty: Elizabeth Taylor: Too Bloody Much
• Liz Taylor: Rare and Unpublished Pictures

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Her public profile blurred between sadly flawed, serious thespian (of the Hollywood, red carpet make), self-aware clown and unrepentant queen of trashy, celluloid decadence, Elizabeth Taylor is often a squeamishly bad film's singular delight. Eventually a career of being type-cast or supremely miscast bleeds into her public persona, whereby she becomes a sort of meta-diva, playing the role of Hollywood actress for both movies and the tabloids.

Those dramatical grotesqueries, that ambitiously failed, epic-size hokum in which she plays the part of aging or nubile tyrannical bitch easily surpass melodrama to become touching monster movies with her often as star.

Glamorously overacting and adroitly stage-villainous, she is clearly having a good time, hamming it up. Free of the sin of Hollywood punctiliousness, she chews up her luxe scenery of co-stars who are of merely pretty types, upstaging blockbuster spectacles, out-pronouncing scripts-by-numbers and adding a comic stirring of life among petrified, glossy-magazine sets.

Lousy stage-acting and glorious, operatic scene-stealing are indistinguishable in her unique performances. Below are some haply campy quotes and films in full of her wonderfully erratic, dramatic, high trash appearances. 

Big girls need big diamonds.

I am a very committed wife. And I should be committed too - for being married so many times.

I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.

I have a woman's body and a child's emotions.

I haven't read any of the autobiographies about me.

I really don't remember much about Cleopatra. There were a lot of other things going on.

I suppose when they reach a certain age some men are afraid to grow up. It seems the older the men get, the younger their new wives get.

I sweat real sweat and I shake real shakes.

I think I'm finally growing up - and about time.

I'm a survivor - a living example of what people can go through and survive.

I've been through it all, baby, I'm mother courage.

I've only slept with men I've been married to. How many women can make that claim?

If someone's dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I'm certainly not dumb enough to turn it down.

It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.

It's not the having, it's the getting.

Marriage is a great institution.

My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked.

People who know me well, call me Elizabeth. I dislike Liz.

So much to do, so little done, such things to be.

Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.

Success is a great deodorant.

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

When people say, 'She's got everything', I've got one answer - I haven't had tomorrow.

You find out who your real friends are when you're involved in a scandal.


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For more of Elizabeth at her ponderously pleasing best see also: The Only Game in Town.

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THIS LAST LINK to the movie Identikit, or The Driver's Seat (Youtube embedding has been disabled) is one of her best, most emotionally grotesque appearances as aging diva (and, in this case, thief). Featuring a cameo by Andy Warhol.