Elizabeth Taylor's Violet Eyes "There are various shades of blues and grays, with many in-between," Norman Saffra, chairman of the ophthalmology department at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, explained to Live Science. "Violet may have been her typical pigmentation."
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.
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.
Colourful eye makeup – Elizabeth Taylor make-up hint
It is reported that she likes to make her eyeballs look whiter, and blue eye shadow helps create this particular effect. “Blue is on the opposite side of the color wheel and balances a red eye,” explained Ida Gàl-Csiszar, makeup artist and Gállány beauty founder.
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.
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Why did Elizabeth Taylor have purple eyes?
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.
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.
While some called for wigs (Cleopatra, Dr Faustus), other parts allowed Elizabeth to use her natural style (1965's Sandpiper in particular) to reveal something about a character's persona, taking her from Elizabethan England (The Taming Of The Shrew) through to contemporary roles in The Only Game in Town and Cat On A ...
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.
One thing these survey results have in common is that light-colored eyes — green, gray, blue, and hazel — are named as the most attractive eye colors in the world. In one large survey of more than 66,000 people, green was chosen as the most attractive eye color.
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.
“There was one eyeliner that she always used and it was a Clinique eyeliner,” Francesca Tolot, a make-up artist who worked with Taylor has said. She didn't use the classic black option but instead worked with a buildable grey shade.
Elizabeth Taylor's eyes, Bruce Springsteen's voice and Marlene Dietrich's legs have all at one time or another been insured with Lloyd's. In 1982, when National Football League players went on strike, it was a Lloyd's policy that covered club owners against the strike's impact.
Elizabeth's curly red hair presented another challenge for the fashion-conscious, and many recipes for dyeing and bleaching emerged as women tried to achieve the same look. Red wigs became a popular alternative, which Elizabeth also took to wearing.
For most of her life, Elizabeth wore wigs, so she might have chosen hair of any colour she liked, but she chose red; she was so committed to the shade that she is even supposed to have dyed the tails of her horses to match. (Who says redheads don't have a sense of humour?)
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.
Over the years, her catalogue of ailments included a brain tumour, skin cancer, pneumonia and she underwent three hip replacements. One of the most debilitating of her ailments was scoliosis, or curvature of the spine. Taylor was born with the condition and suffered back problems all her life as a result.
Liz Taylor's head-turning looks may, at least partly, have been due to a rare genetic mutation that resulted in her having two rows of eyelashes on each eyelid rather than one. The technical term for this disorder is distichiasis.
