“It was very strange,” she said the other afternoon. “I still had an English accent.” (She was born in London to American parents, and the family returned to the United States at the outbreak of war in 1939.) “If I remember, I had to put on an American accent. But I don't think I've ever seen the film.
A dual citizen of the UK and the U.S., she was born a British subject through her birth on British soil and an American citizen through her parents. At the age of three, Taylor began taking ballet lessons with Vaccani.
After an idyllic early childhood in England, Elizabeth Taylor and her family emigrate to the United States. Not long after, a star is born in the sun-drenched city of Los Angeles.
Taylor's twin-set of lashes are thought to be the result of a genetic mutation at the FOXC2 gene. (Funny that a woman most men would describe as "foxy" was possibly affected by the FOXC2 gene!) An extra row of eyelashes is known medically as distichiasis (pronounced dis-tic-key-i-asis) and it's a rare disorder.
Did Elizabeth Taylor really have violet colored eyes?
Did Elizabeth Taylor have violet eyes? These days, thanks to colored contact lenses, anyone can have violet-colored eyes . Taylor didn't come by her purple peepers that way; the first tinted contact lenses weren't commercially available until 1983. Taylor's eye color was the real deal.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR IN LONDON (1963) documentary clip
What was so special about Elizabeth Taylor's eyes?
Taylor also had a rare genetic defect that resulted in her having two layers of eyelashes, which really helped give her colorful eyes that dramatic pop.
While filming National Velvet in 1944, then 12-year-old Taylor was thrown off a horse and hurt her back. However it was not that injury but scoliosis, or a curvature in her spine that she was born with, that was responsible for the chronic back pain she faced throughout her life.
The Early Years. Elizabeth Taylor was born in London, 1932, to a prominent American art dealer and former stage actress. Taylor was born with a thick layer of black hair covering her body, a rare condition known as hypertrichosis. She also had a double row of eyelashes.
And, well, she must have loved playing that part, because Liz would infamously walk down the aisle eight times (to seven husbands, marrying Richard Burton twice) over the next 40 years. Her first wedding took place in 1950, at the age of 18, and she didn't stop until her last stint as bride in 1991, at the age of 59.
She was born in England in 1932 of American parents, and there picked up enough accent to gild her syllables ever since. Unlike, say, Madonna's English accent, hers was authentic; it came from being, not wanting to be. The family rushed home during the early war years; her father opened an art gallery in Beverly Hills.
We did a little digging to answer these questions and here's what we found: Her eye color was actually natural — for the most part. Colored contacts weren't commercially available until 1983, so Taylor wasn't faking it. However, she was born with a very specific and rare amount of the pigment melanin.
Having met at Mocambo nightclub — per Entertainment Weekly — in Los Angeles the year before, Taylor was only 18 when she wed then-23-year-old hotel heir Conrad "Nicky" Hilton on May 6, 1950. However, the ill-fated eight-month marriage began crumbling even before their 14-week European honeymoon was over.
In 1970, Taylor was treated for what was described as corrective surgery to stop slight internal bleeding, two weeks after she had undergone a gynecological operation in Los Angeles. Taylor underwent surgery again in 1973 to remove an ovarian cyst and to clear up a stomach infection.
All other terms of Taylor's revocable living trust have remained private, as intended. It's rumored that the trust passed the majority of her assets to her children, grandchildren, and to various charities. Taylor's AIDS work saw her address the General Assembly at the United Nations.
Elizabeth Taylor also had diabetes, although she never confirmed it. The actress, who was considered the most beautiful woman in the world in the 1960s, went on a diet at the end of the 1980s and wrote a book about it called "Elizabeth takes off".
Violet eyes are sometimes found in people with albinism, which affects only one person out of every 20,000. But even people with albinism usually have blue eyes, hazel eyes, green eyes, or brown eyes. This is why it's believed that less than 1% of people in the world have naturally violet eyes.
The American Film Institute named her seventh on its Female Legends list. Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born February 27, 1932, in Hampstead, England, the second child of Americans residing in England, art dealer Francis Lenn Taylor and actress Sara Viola Warmbrodt.
