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Adjectives abound in Elizabeth, the biography of Elizabeth Taylor by celebrity author J. Randy Taraborrelli out Tuesday (Warner Books, $26.99).
Self-consumed, petulant, gentle, misunderstood, stubborn, sloppy, loyal, sharp-tongued, temperamental -- they make a detailed portrait of one of history's greatest movie stars.
But "complex" is the word that best describes Taylor, writes Taraborrelli, who has chronicled many stars' lives, including those of Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra.
From determined young actress to passionate young wife to pill and booze addict to devoted AIDS activist, Taylor, 74, has tackled life full tilt. Although Taylor did not sit down for interviews for the book, Taraborrelli says in the source notes that she "encouraged members of her inner circle" to talk.
Among highlights in Taraborrelli's more than 500-page book, which covers the years through 2000:
*Schooled by studio tutors, she was so poor at math that she had to count by using her fingers until she was 17.
*A nose job? Taraborrelli writes: "Though she will never admit to it or confirm it, people who know her well insist that she would have rhinoplasty surgery -- when she was in her twenties." He says the executives at MGM thought her nose was a "little too thick at the bottom," so they ordered the change. "It's been said that the surgery was performed by the same doctor who did Natalie Wood's and Marilyn Monroe's noses."
*Her health problems have been chronic. Writes Taraborrelli: By 1961, she had had "a nervous breakdown, colitis, three cesarean sections, a tonsillectomy, anemia, a crushed spinal disk, bronchitis, meningitis, phlebitis, a broken leg, torn knee ligaments, double pneumonia, food poisoning, a splinter in her eye, three vertebrae replaced in her spine, a tracheotomy ... and she wasn't even thirty."
*Soon after she turned 50, she would not leave the house without taking at least two Percodans mixed with Jack Daniel's, Taraborrelli writes. A year later, in 1983, Taylor checked herself into Betty Ford Center rehab clinic. "To fully comprehend the scope of Elizabeth's drug problem," Taraborrelli writes, "consider this: In the five-year period between 1980 and 1985, she was given prescriptions for more than a thousand different drugs ranging from sleeping pills to painkillers to tranquilizers."
*Only fans and tabloids called her Liz, especially during her romance with Richard Burton, when they became Liz and Dick. People who know her call her Elizabeth.
*Pages and pages are devoted to the men of Taylor's life, most notably Mike Todd and Burton, her two true loves.
Near the end of the book, Taraborrelli notes that upon returning to California after being dubbed a dame by the British Empire in 2000, she held a dinner party and brought up Todd and Burton, both long dead. Said Taylor to the guests: "Somewhere, the two of them are probably having drinks, waiting for me to join them. And oh, the hell we shall cause in heaven if, in fact, that's where we end up, which," she concluded with a cackle, "I highly doubt."
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