As the world celebrates and honors Elizabeth Taylor, who died from congestive heart failure at age 79, here's what immediately comes to mind: passionate love affairs and eight marriages to seven husbands, a penchant for expensive jewels, and a game-changing advocacy role for AIDS awareness.
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.
What type of brain tumour did Elizabeth Taylor have?
The tumor was a meningioma the size of an orange. The singer Sheryl Crow, the actresses Elizabeth Taylor, Mary Tyler Moore, Kate Walsh and Maria Menounos are some celebrities diagnosed with the same type of tumor in the brain: meningioma. One of the most frequent among adults and that affects more to women.
What illness did Elizabeth Taylor have during the filming of Cleopatra?
Liz Taylor was dramatically struck down with double-pneumonia. Rushed into hospital she fell into a coma and had to have an emergency tracheotomy to allow her to breathe (the scar from which is still visible in the final film).
The Devastating Health Issues That Killed Elizabeth Taylor
Did Elizabeth Taylor have two sets of eyelashes?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In her 79 years she suffered from injuries, scoliosis and skin cancer, and endured more than 30 surgeries. In the months leading up to her death Wednesday, those who knew her said she was wheelchair-bound with dark bruises on her arms.
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".
Larry Fortensky (January 17, 1952 – July 7, 2016) was an American construction worker known for being the last husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor. They were married in 1991 at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch and divorced five years later. Stockton, California, U.S.
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.
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.
After years of silence, Larry Fortensky, the construction worker who met Elizabeth Taylor in rehab and became her eighth and final husband, has opened up about their years together – and their conversation just days before the screen legend died last month at 79.
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 it turns out that 7 percent of people with lymphedema-distichiasis syndrome also suffer from congenital heart disease. Taylor had a history of heart problems; she had surgery in 2009 to repair a leaky valve, and her death on March 23, 2011, was caused by congestive heart failure.
