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AIDS: Elizabeth Taylor tells the truth
2011-04-27

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The following interview with Elizabeth Taylor ran in the November 1997 edition of POZ, a national magazine on HIV/AIDS issues. It is reprinted here with permission.

Taylor, 79, one of the most important early supporters in the fight against AIDS, died March 23 of congestive heart failure. Taylor won numerous awards over the years, and is seventh on the American Film Institute's Female Legends List. She won two Academy Awards for Best Actress (for BUtterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), and the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Award in 1992 for her AIDS work.

Taylor was a critical voice of reason in the 1980s, when AIDS first became prominent in the U.S. She raised millions of dollars for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), which she helped start after the 1985 death of her friend Rock Hudson from AIDS complications. She attended at least one Chicago benefit for AIDS support. Her own Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, which she founded in 1991, raised an estimated $50 million to fight the disease. Chicago House and Howard Brown Health Center are among those agencies receiving funding from the Foundation.

BY KEVIN SESSUMS, POZ MAGAZINE,

NOVEMBER 1997

Elizabeth Taylor is still the world's most magnificent movie star, even though she hasn't starred in a film in 18 years. Just listen to the expert, columnist Liz Smith, regarding the scourge of paparazzi—that frightening barometer of fame for the fin de siecle. "Can you guess which female celebrity, caught topless, would ensure a million-dollar fee? It's 65-year-old Elizabeth Taylor!"

Taylor, who's been famous now—at times notorious—for more than half a century, must have gotten a kick out of reading that item. Yet what this remarkable woman has done for more than a decade has nothing to do with press clippings or prying lensmen. She has chosen instead to dedicate herself to educating the world about AIDS, and her voice has been a clarion call to redouble our efforts.

The founding chairman of the American Foundation for AIDS research (amFAR), which provides much-needed funds to community-based science, she later formed the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to support direct care for people with HIV.

Those who cynically waited for her to tire of the cause once grief for her friend Rock Hudson subsided have been, thankfully, disappointed. And she has utilized that valued celebrity of hers to raise a fortune for research and patient care.

Taylor agreed to meet me recently at her home in Bel Air. The house, next door to the Reagans', once belonged to Nancy Sinatra, Taylor bought it in 1982 for a couple of million dollars after she divorced her sixth husband, Sen. John Warner of Virginia. She kept a lot of the house and its furnishing the way the first Mrs. Sinatra left them—except for the mezuzah that Taylor, a convert to Judiasm, has attached to the front door's frame.

It is a surprisingly small home, done mostly in white. The carpet is modified white shag. White chaise lounges lunge toward the living room from either side of a large fireplace. On each chaise is an ornate pillow designed by her late friend, Gianni Versace, one imprinted with the face of his trademark Medusa head, eerily saddened by his murder only two days before. A huge aquarium filled with exotic lavender fish takes up one whole wall. Jagged geological stones, echoing the colors of the fish, are precisely placed about the gigantic white lacquered coffee table. A collection of paintings by Degas, Van Gogh, Monet Modigliani and Renoir hang above the white sofa. On it is a needlepoint cushion embroidered with the adage, "IT'S NOT THE HAVING, IT'S THE GETTING."

On the bookshelves in the game room are three Oscars. Two are Best Actress statues, received for BUtterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The other is the Jean Herolt Humanitarian Award, bestowed in 1992. Also on the shelves are cherished photographs with the Reagans and the Fords. There is a jaunty shot from Ascot; laughing, she is escorted by Noel Coward and Richard Burton. Two pictures catch her candidly keeping company with that other famous Elizabeth from London. A beautiful portrait of Natalie Wood, a present from friend Robert Wagner, has been given prominence.

I walk back into the living room. Leaning toward the aquarium, I inspect the piscine shades of lavender floating before my face.

"Hello, I'm Elizabeth," I heard.

A dog yelps.

I turn to see Elizabeth Taylor. My recent computer search of boldfaced info magnifies the vision of a rather fragile woman before me, her face still boldly beautiful. Take, like me, a deep, appreciative breath: National Velvet, Lassie Come Home, Little Women, Father of the Bride, Nicky Hilton, A Place in the Sun, Michael Wilding, Giant, Raintree County, Maggie the Cat, Mike Todd, Suddenly Last Summer, Eddie Fisher, Cleopatra, double-barreled Burton, The Taming of the Shrew, the Krupp diamond, 73 hospital stays, weight fluctuations, Studio 54, the Betty Ford Clinic, mother of four, grandmother of nine, Malcolm Forbes, The French Legion of Honor, Broadway revivals of The Little Foxes and Private Lives, UNICEF, those three Oscars, perfume mogul, Michael Jackson, the Ryan White CARE Bill, Larry Fortensky, hip replacements, Chechnyan war orphans and, now, the recent recuperation from the removal of a tumor attached to her brain.

Taylor is wearing a white caftan-like gown. Her feet are shod in see-through plastic sandals, her toenails painted a frosty white. She wears very little makeup. Her hair, a shock of frostier white, is propped into a spikey flat-top. Sugar, her beloved 5-year-old Maltese, has entered with her. The tiny bundle of barking, beribboned white hair seems to have molted from atop Taylor's head.

I take my place on the sofa. Taylor precisely places herself in a chair by my side. Surprisingly, her most noticeable bit of jewelry is the red piece of string tied about her left wrist as if it were a bracelet.

"Are you into Kabbalah?" I ask, knowing that a red wrist string is worn when one has begun to study this ancient Jewish form of mysticism, which has taken the place of Marianne Williamson's spiritual shtick among the cognoscenti of Culver City and its environs. Madonna, Sandra Bernhard and Roseanna are adherents.

"Yes. I started about two months ago," said Taylor, positioning Sugar in her lap. "I am deeply, privately spiritual. I've always been interested in spiritual things. Kabbala is not conformist. You don't have to be Jewish to believe in it. It's not a religion. It coincides with many of my beliefs."

"Which are?" I asked.

Taylor burst into the heightened giggles that gurgle up from her inner child-star. It is as if Lassie had just done something vulgar in front of adult company. "I don't want to talk about it," she insists, calming herself by calming Sugar.

She does want to talk about a lot of other subjects. And our conversation is laced throughout with the sound of her distinct laughter, her most clarion of calls—not that girlish giggle, but a grown-up woman's wanton, gritty cackle.

KEVIN SESSUMS: You have an English passport, Elizabeth, but you haven't lived there since you were a small child. I was wondering if there are bits of yourself that you still consider British.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I guess I feel that London is my hometown and my roots are English—especially the countryside. The most vivid memories of my youth—when I was allowed to be young before I was in films—are of riding my horse in the country. There is nothing as beautiful as the English countryside.

KEVIN SESSUMS: When was the last time you went there?

EELIZABETH TAYLOR: I haven't been back for five years because of the quarantine law with Sugar. They don't allow dogs in. It is so ridiculous, because of that tunnel they've built. Rats can now hail a taxi and go back and forth to the continent.

KEVIN SESSUMS: One of the most serious AIDS-policy differences between the States and England is the position each country has taken regarding the needle exchange issue.

EELIZABETH TAYLOR: In Washington, D.C., I've quietly opened a needle exchange with only $72,000. I started a center. From the outside you can't tell what it is. I say only $72,000 because it has changed so many lives. It's a center for needle exchange and condom distribution.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Listen to these statistics: In 1988 in England and in Wales and Northern Ireland, a needle-exchange system reduced the seroconversion rate from 12 percent to 5 percent. In 1985 they started it in Scotland and the results were even more astounding; the seroconversion rate dropped from 77 percent to 18 percent. Why, considering numbers like that, do you think it's been so difficult to get the Clinton administration behind the needle-exchange program?

EELIZABETH TAYLOR: I don't know. I don't understand it. I could take some of these needle-exchange people to testify if it would do any good. Sixty-three percent of AIDS cases among women are related to sharing needles. One-third of all AIDS cases are due to sharing needles. All! People stupidly think that if you have a needle then you're going to go out and try some heroin today. It's so naïve. This little center I've opened is a place where you can get food once a day. They even have a makeover once a month—hair and nails and things like that. It's extraordinarily effective. It can be done!

KEVIN SESSUMS: Donna Shalala, secretary of Health and Human Services, is really standing in the way of the Clinton administration getting behind a needle-exchange program. Some say she's just running interference for President Clinton, who doesn't want to be accused of being soft on drugs in any way. But there are still others who insist that she is protecting her own political hide because she wants to run for governor of Wisconsin and can't appear too liberal back home.

EELIZABETH TAYLOR: I think she is causing so many problems and being so irresponsible. But has anybody told this woman that she could be responsible for a lot of deaths? I'm not accusing her of that, because it's a pretty harsh accusation, but by not allowing it she's putting up a barrier. How are we going to break through that? One woman!

KEVIN SESSUMS: Well, she's serving at the behest of one man. What is your attitude about Clinton?

EELIZABETH TAYLOR: He's disappointed me. He's had the opportunity to turn around the government and come forward and help, like he said he would at the beginning. He hasn't. He's waffled. And by putting this woman Shalala in charge, he's done something very damaging. That appointment was worse than just waffling on the issue. I mean, the CDC and AmFAR can prove without a reasonable doubt that needle exchange can work. There is no question. This Donna Shalala should go to some of the needle-exchange places and look at the records. Instead she's just shooting her mouth off. She could do something so dramatic and lasting as far as people's lives are concerned. The fact that she's not doing it in order to get to a higher political seat in her life makes me want to do something to her other seat.

KEVIN SESSUMS: What? Kick her in the ass?

EELIZABETH TAYLOR: Yes!

KEVIN SESSUMS: You lived in Washington as a senator's wife for several years. Do you miss it?

EELIZABETH TAYLOR: Nooooooo!!!! Washington is the hardest town for a woman in the world—especially if you're married to a politician. If the woman is the politician, then it might be quite different. But if you're wedded to the politician, it's like your lips are sealed. You are a robot. They even tell you what you can wear. You can imagine how that sat with me! I was told that I—me!—was not allowed to wear purple because it smacked of royalty.

For the two months of campaigning, I obeyed them. But then, after the election, the Republican women gave a luncheon in my honor for all that I had done for the campaign, and I put on my purplest Halston pantsuit. I told them the story that the women who ran John Warner's campaign had forbid me to wear purple. I got up and pointed out one specific woman. I said, "That one! Right there!"

KEVIN SESSUMS: AIDS itself has always been awash with Washingtonian concerns that are almost as silly as that. Political expediency. Moral judgments. Turf wars. Bitterly fought social policies.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Unfortunately, Kevin, people lose their sense of compassion.

KEVIN SESSUMS: With protease inhibitors, the medical news has become more hopeful for people living with AIDS. Ironically, the politicians now feel that maybe they can put this controversial issue on the back burner, where they've always wanted it to be.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: And there is hope. But the percentages of infection are higher for men and women between their teen years and 25 because they have stopped being cautious. People are becoming careless again—like in the '80s. And the thing about protease inhibitors is that not everybody can afford them.

KEVIN SESSUMS: I know that you have been frustrated in your own attempts to make inroads here in Los Angeles into the inner-city communities that are being devastated by AIDS. How have you been received by the African-American power structure?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: The Black people do not want me.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Why is that?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Because I'm white. They don't want a Big White Mama coming down there. They think it's condescending. Why would they mind? Before Doris Duke died, I thought that I had put together $3 million targeted for South Central. That news was not received with joy. I don't know why. I wanted to work with the Black people, though it is their responsibility what to do with the money. But if I can raise it, it is then up to the community to be responsible for it. I'm not trying to take that away from them. That's something they should do with pride. But then Doris died—and all that scandal happened—so I didn't get the money. I haven't given up trying to be of some help in the inner cities. But I have to have the money to do it. I just can't go waltzing down there and say that I have a great idea. I've got to have the money. And it's not just the Black people down there—it's Latin and Asian, too. It's people of color. It's not just a Black issue.

KEVIN SESSUMS: One of your big disagreements with AmFAR was on this issue of branching out with their work, or taking AmFAR to the international stage.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: We finally did go international. But I did have a big fight. I mean, the United States is not the only nation that is suffering with AIDS. But Americans are very chauvinistic. I was brought up internationally. I've traveled worldwide. I helped people in Africa years ago. I've always thought more globally. I did spend those first seven years of my life in England.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Where does this impulse to help spring from? You could sit on your ass and reign as "Elizabeth Taylor," but you don't.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I find being "Elizabeth Taylor" really boring. I think if you were born with privileges—or given privileges—then you should share them. Like money—it's to share. I've known too many people who just sat and hoarded and were miserable. Just miserable SOBs. I have always believed that giving is one of the reasons that we were put on this earth. I've acted on that belief since I was old enough to leave my nest. …

KEVIN SESSUMS: Yet you grew up right here in a town known for its narcissism.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: But I saw that. My parents were very smart. They made sure that my playmates were not in the industry. My father was an art dealer and he and my mother made sure I learned and thought about other things.

KEVIN SESSUMS: You've talked before about the first time you nearly died—back in 1961—from viral pneumonia and the out-of-body experience you had. When you awoke in your hospital room, you said, "I wanted a paintbrush… I wanted to paint with the sense of color I saw." I was struck by that, not because of the experience you had, but how at that moment you became your father's child. You became at your death his little girl. You've never really talked about your father, Elizabeth. What was your relationship with him like?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Mmmmmmm … yes. Aaahhh … I … aahhh…didn't really know my father well until I was about 21. We had missed each other in a way . I didn't really have much of a youth, you know, except for those first seven years riding my horse back in Kent. Those are the happiest memories of my life—riding bareback on those 3,000 acres and being able to jump over streams and go through the forests.

It was a magical experience. I could let my imagination fly, my sense of poetry fly. It was like a make-believe world, but it was a real world. Then I had to go to school, and it was drudgery. I did enjoy ballet class because it was a form of self-expression. I think that is why I became a child actress. The choice was given to me. I could make-believe. I could express myself outside what was going on in the world.

And what was going on in the world was dreadful. It was World War II. I was here by then and my England was being destroyed. It broke my tiny heart. As a child here in America, I used to listen to classical music on the radio in my room and think of England, think of those forests. I'd sit there and weep. It was very dramatic.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Well, you are an actress, dear.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: This was even before I was an actress. I was around 7. I was just always very emotional.

KEVIN SESSUMS: The basis of any artist's work, no matter what form it takes, is empathy. Keats called it "negative capability." You've always had that.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: It's all about connecting, about bonding. I think that's why I've been put through the experience of almost dying so many times. Through each experience I have learned something, and that is to have, yes, more empathy, more compassion, more understanding, about what it must be like for people who are really sick.

KEVIN SESSUMS: One of the things you bring to the fight against AIDS is the authority of your many illnesses. You're not just some dilettante actress trying to increase her fame. How are you feeling these days? You look great—amazingly so.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I feel terrific. I can't stay up late. But that's OK. I just love crawling into bed. I've got a collection now of beautiful sheets. I have a beautiful bedroom. I decided that if I'm going to be sick, then I'm going to have a gorgeous bedroom. I mean, when they told me I had a two-and-a-half-inch brain tumor, I actually said, "Here we go again." The reason they found out—and thank God they did, God moves in mysterious ways—is because I'd had a seizure. I wouldn't have known!

KEVIN SESSUMS: I've never been cut on, myself. I'm not even circumcised.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: God! If I added up all my scars!

KEVIN SESSUMS: Physical and emotional?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Yeah!

KEVIN SESSUMS: Someone told me that the Aaron Diamond Institute's Dr. David Ho had a lot to do with saving your life during your 1990 bout with a pulmonary virus.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: He did! I can't remember the exact continuity of the story because I had a temperature of 106. He said that he wanted to put me on life support, but first he said they needed to do an open-lung biopsy so they can go in and take sections of my lung and put them under a microscope. They couldn't diagnose at first which particular virus or bacteria it was, so they couldn't give me the appropriate antibiotics.

David was just sitting with me after that and sort of making me breathe, consciously breathe, because if I had stopped, that would have been all she wrote. Then he got some needed information and went into action. Everybody started buzzing around me.

All of a sudden, I'm unconscious and a machine was breathing for me. I woke up in the intensive-care ward with tubes coming out of my throat, my nose, my chest, my ribs, my feet, my wrists. It looked like little fish swimming by in this one tube in my neck, but they were little pieces of flesh. When you're that delirious you can kind of rip out so I thought they were fish!

Another thing that was so funny was when they had to give me an intravenous blood transfusion. I was so scared because this was seven years ago, and they still were not sure about how clean blood transfusions were. I did not want to have one out of the drawer. But I had to have it. I saw this one bag of red blood. The nurse I had, I knew very well. Her name's Cathy. By that point she was like an old friend. I thought Cathy had put lace around the bag and put little sequins on it to kind of camp it up and make it really kitsch. I said, "Cathy, oh, you're too much. That's so sweet." It made me laugh and took away my fear of the blood transfusion. I had that for about three days. Cathy just kind of smiled at me.

Three years later, on yet another visit to the hospital, I brought it up again with her and told her how sweet that had been, and how campy it was. She said, "Elizabeth, I have to finally tell you that I didn't do that. You were delirious. That was in your imagination." But it was a way of keeping me calm.

KEVIN SESSUMS: A sense of camp calms your nerves?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Yeah.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Are you afraid of death?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: No. I'm afraid of pain.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Were you shocked when you awoke from your latest surgery and saw yourself as a bald woman?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I was so surprised when I came to and looked at my head in the mirror. I asked, "Is my head all flat in the back?" They said I had a beautifully shaped head. But I said, "Are you sure it's not a cushion head?

KEVIN SESSUMS: You've been able to keep your sense of humor through all your illnesses. So, thank God, have gay men through this AIDS epidemic. All those affected by AIDS have shown enormous strength in the face of adversity, but gay men in particular have proven that we're not as vain and selfish as others have always made us out to be.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: A lot of people are selfish, Kevin.

KEVIN SESSUMS: I know that. But we, as a sociological group, don't have the institutions that straight people have that assist in alleviating selfishness—child rearing, marriage …

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Marriage can be a very selfish institution.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Oh, it can, can it? I take it you are speaking now as the expert that you are on the subject. What are your feelings about same-sex marriage?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: As a matter of fact, I'm not for marriage of any kind.

KEVIN SESSUMS: So you don't think you'll ever get married again? Or are you one of those never-say-never people?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: At this point in time, I'm saying never. Never again! I don't see why anybody of the same sex or the opposite sex in this day and age needs to get married. I was old-fashioned in that I always thought I had to get married. But that's so passé now, so I don't have to do that anymore.

KEVIN SESSUMS: You can live with a man now.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: All I have to do is try and find somebody.

KEVIN SESSUMS: You're still a catch. I don't think you'll have any trouble.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Find me someone!

KEVIN SESSUMS: What do you think your affinity for gay men has been about? You've always been very friendly with a whole coterie of gay men. Was it your refuge from your being such a heterosexual goddess?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: No, not at all. I never even thought of it.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Does the term "fag hag" upset you? Do you think that's an awful term?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I do. I think it's a really horrible expression. I've had great friendships with men who happen to be homosexual.

KEVIN SESSUMS: I just thought that within those homosexual friendships, a great beauty like you could find a way to relax that was not afforded to her anywhere else in this town. God knows, you must have been hit on constantly.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I don't think it had anything to do with that. I always knew what I wanted in that regard, and what I didn't want. I was always exclusive in my head. Somebody hitting on me made no difference to me. Unless I was interested in them, they could go take a Flying F. I'm not one to be pushed around.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Not even in death. Do you believe that when you die, you will see all the people who have been close to you in your life? That would be quite a greeting party. I mean, the husbands alone ...

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I did. I did see them. I saw Mike Todd. He said, "You have to go back; it's not your time."

I find it very difficult to talk about, because it sounds so screwy. Back then—this is when I awoke and wanted to paint all of the colors I saw—you didn't talk about such things. But I told everybody in the room. There were about 11 people there in the room with me—doctors and nurses keeping all the machinery going, which was very antiquated. I'm glad that I told them what I had seen, but they just went, "Sure honey." One of the things that I've learned from almost dying so many times is that I'm so aware of the moments that I know are going to turn into wonderful memories. Sometimes a moment will happen in my life and I'll stop and think, "This is something I'll have all my life." Whether it's a sunset or looking into a tiger's eyes when I was in Africa… things like that that you just flash on.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Do you keep a journal?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: No, but I wish I had. When I was at Betty Ford, we were forced to keep a journal and reflect on what had happened to us inside during the day. My counselor was a real cow. But she said one nice thing to me. She said, "You write exquisitely. You should become a writer."

KEVIN SESSUMS: Have you ever thought about writing a book?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: No, because I would have to give up today and dive into yesterday. And then, of course, you can't predict tomorrow, and my life has had so many startling tomorrows that I don't think that they've stopped. I don't think my book has come to an end. I think I'm mid-chapter. I don't want to dwell on the past. I want to live today!

KEVIN SESSUMS: Do you think you'll ever act again?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I don't know. I might. I've just read a script I liked.

KEVIN SESSUMS: You've survived so many people in your life.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Oh, God, so many—and from a very early age.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Do you ever have survivor's guilt?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: No. No. Not at all. I truly believe after having almost died so many times that God must have some reason for keeping me alive. There must be something He wants me to do. And I'll know. I'll know. I just have to be still. God knows where we all are.

KEVIN SESSUMS: One of the things that a lot of gay men and people with AIDS—and probably even you when you were at Betty Ford—have to grapple with is a deep-seated feeling of shame. It causes such destructive behavior in our lives. How do we get rid of it?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I was ashamed at Betty Ford—you're right. I thought, "God! I must have hurt so many people!" That gave me a terrible sense of shame. But I don't have that shame now, because it's not constructive. I really want to make my life positive and help people as much as I can and not be negative. If you think negative thoughts, you'll become negative. And your actions become negative. You have to be positive in every aspect of your being.

KEVIN SESSUMS: You've had such a grand life—whether it's being the grandest movie star this town has ever seen or grandly going to Betty Ford or having a grand number of marriages or …

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Wait, wait, wait. How do you "grandly" go to Betty Ford?

KEVIN SESSUMS: Because you were the first famous person to admit going there. That was a grand gesture on your part.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: A friend of mine once sent me 500 roses to the Betty Ford Center. One of the negative things they make you write down about yourself is being guilty of grandiosity. I took the roses and put them in the living room so everybody could share them. My counselor, who said I should give up acting and write, said, "Those must have been sent to Elizabeth Taylor. Nobody else suffers from that kind of grandiosity." I said, "Look, I didn't send them to myself."

KEVIN SESSUMS: You have very loyal friendships. One of the things even more controversial than your advocacy of needle-exchange programs is your close friendship with Michael Jackson. You've even agreed to be the godmother of his child.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: We love each other, Michael and I. That's all there is to say. Both of us had really strange childhoods. We have a lot in common that way. We love each other. And if nobody understands it—or doesn't dig it—then tough shit.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Tell me about your childhood.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: We had that farm in Kent where I had my horse. I also had a pet chicken named Strawberry. Then during my childhood here in Hollywood, I remember going to a party at a man's house—his name was Atwater Kent, of all things. It was a huge house somewhere around here in Bel Air. He had a circus party. In one of the cages was a baby lion. I was about 12. I remember that I took that baby lion out of the cage because it was so hot. I got it some water. Atwater was in his 70s, a very rich man. He owned something called Kent Radios, or something like that. He had this cultivated English kind of accent. He saw me with the lion cub and said, "Oh, take it home with you, darling." So I did. I took it home with me. It was chewing on my dress and leaving slobber all over me.

My father said, "Elizabeth, you cannot bring up a lion in Beverly Hills. You have to take it back." I said, "I can't take it back. How will I find the people? They've all gone home." I kept it for a couple of days. My mother took my little silk dress to the cleaners.

A few days later she went to pick up the dress, and the cleaner said, "We can't get this stain out, Mrs. Taylor. What in the world is it? And my mother, who was kind of like Billie Burke, shrugged and said, "Oh, it's just lion drool."

KEVIN SESSUMS: Hollywood! I tell you, you should have kept a journal. Let me ask you about a few of the people you've worked with over the years. Let's start with Tennessee Williams.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I adored Tennessee. He was one of my best friends. He was hopelessly naive. He had no sense of business. I stepped in and tried to act as his agent when I found out what he was not getting. He thought he had a good deal. He was getting five percent of the profits. I said, "There is no such thing! It's about the gross!" I asked him, "Have you ever made money off any of your films?" He said, "Well, no." I said, "Tennessee, that's why! Aaaagghhh!!" So I took him in hand! I love him dearly.

KEVIN SESSUMS: How about Montgomery Clift? Were you in love with him, in a way?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I loved him. But I knew from A Place in the Sun that he was gay—probably even more than he did. And I helped him with it, which is extraordinary because I was only about 16, and I didn't really know anything about it. I turned 17 during the making of that movie. I really didn't know then what being a homosexual was. But I just knew… well, I don't know how I knew.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Part of the poetry of your AIDS service, to me, is an allusion to your performance in A Place in the Sun. It's as if all of us gay men, all of those living with AIDS, are Monty Clift and you're turning to us in close-up and saying, "Tell Mama. Tell Mama all about it."

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Mmmmm … yes. "Tell Mama all … "

KEVIN SESSUMS: James Dean?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I loved Jimmy, too. We used to sit up and talk and talk.

KEVIN SESSUMS: There's been this postmortem debate about whether he was gay or not. What do you think?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: He hadn't made up his mind. He was only 24 when he died. But he was certainly fascinated by women. He flirted around. He and I … twinkled.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Better be careful—sounds like water sports.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Oh God! We had a … well … a … little twinkle for each other.

KEVIN SESSUMS: OK. We'll let the readers decide what a "twinkle" is. Part of your attraction as a celebrity, Elizabeth, is your personal dichotomy, which is exemplified by your saint-like AIDS work and your reputation as a Hollywood bad girl.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Thank God! But not just Hollywood! Please—not Hollywood!

KEVIN SESSUMS: OK—Bad Girl for the Whole World!

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Better. That dichotomy is not something that I've consciously done, but I'm aware that it exists. I certainly am not a saint. Thank God!

KEVIN SESSUMS: If I said, "Elizabeth Taylor is a great broad," would you take that as a compliment?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Sure. I'm also vulnerable. I'm trusting. I get hurt easily. I'm tough when I have to be. I can let myself back away from an on-charging train. I can spin on a dime. And I have led a very strange life.

KEVIN SESSUMS: But a very productive one. It hasn't all been about celluloid.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: No. You can see through celluloid, and it is brittle. Neither of those things is true about me.

See www.poz.com/articles/elizabeth_taylor_aids_hiv_2071_13608.shtml


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