Elizabeth Taylor famously tied the knot eight times
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The Hollywood legend married Richard Burton twice and said they were "like two atom bombs"
Taylor died of congestive heart failure on March 23, 2011, at age 79
Elizabeth Tayloris remembered as an icon, but what's spoken about as much as her talent is her eight marriages.
The two-timeOscarwinnermarried seven different menin her lifetime, includingRichard Burtontwice andEddie Fisher, with whom shehad an affair while he was marriedtoDebbie Reynolds.
Taylor and Fisher's five-year union followed the death of her third husband,Mike Todd, in March 1958.
"Every time I married, I thought it would be forever, but I have no idea why I married Eddie," TaylortoldVoguein October 1987. "We talked about Mike all the time. Eddie had known him and idolized him, so it was a way of keeping Mike alive. I guess that's pretty sick."
In the interview, she also admitted, "I always needed a man in my life," but as of the late 1980s, she was enjoying her time alone, saying, "I'm very happy right now. I'm sort of beginning to grow up."
Over time, shehad four children: sons Michael andChristopherand daughters Liza and Maria, andmultiple grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Taylordied of congestive heart failureat age 79 on March 23, 2011. However, she has remained a touchstone for a new generation of stars.
In honor of the 15th anniversary of her death, here are some of Taylor's best quotes over the years on matters of the (occasionally broken) heart.
"Let them know I'm coming!"
Taylor's first marriage was toConrad "Nicky" Hilton Jr., heir to the multimillion-dollar hotel empire (andParis Hilton's great-uncle), in May 1950.
Thousands of onlookers gathered in the streets outside the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, Calif., as Taylor — then just 18 and ravishing in yards of white satin encrusted with seed pearls — raced to the ceremony.
"Turn on the sirens," she urged her police escort. "Let them know I'm coming!"
Just a year later, she'd separated from Hilton, claiming that he had physically abused her and even kicked her while she was pregnant, causing a miscarriage.
"He was a wonderful father!"
Taylor's ill-fated marriage to Hilton didn't deter her. In February 1952, she married English actor Michael Wilding, whom she met while making 1952'sIvanhoe. Wilding was 20 years her senior on their wedding day, and the calm presence she needed after her tumultuous first marriage.
"It's a leap year, isn't it? Well, I leaped!" theWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?star said of marrying Wilding.
The couple had two children: son Michael, now a sculptor, and Christopher, now an editor. Taylor told PEOPLE in 2006 that Wilding "was a wonderful father."
Still, after five years of marriage, they called it quits. InElizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, the actress said their marriage failed because "I need someone to dominate me."
"Everything soared under his exuberant, loving care"
Her third marriage was to Todd, a movie producer 23 years her senior. Their union ended in tragedy when he waskilled in a plane crash, leaving Taylor a widow at age 26.
Taylor said that when she heard of the accident, "I just started screaming."
The two were married from February 1957 until Todd's death in March 1958, and Taylor later wrote that he was her first real love.
"He didn't ask me, he told me," Taylor recalled of his marriage proposal in the 1987 memoirElizabeth Takes Off. "God, I loved him. My self-esteem, my image, everything soared under his exuberant, loving care."
The couple had one child together, daughter Liza, who was just an infant when her father died.
"What did you expect me to do, sleep alone?"
After Todd's death, Taylor sought comfort in the arms of her late husband's friend Fisher, an actor who was still married to Reynolds at the time. A month later, Fisher made the decision permanent, leaving Reynolds andtheir two kids behind.
He and Taylor tied the knot in May 1959.
"What did you expect me to do, sleep alone?" Taylor once said of their affair.
As Reynolds and Fisher's son, Todd, put it inRebel Superstar, the uproar in the press over Taylor and Fisher made the fuss overAngelina JolieandBrad Pitt"look like a walk in the park."
Fisher later wrote that he was powerless against Taylor's allure: "Elizabeth lived by her own rule: She wants what she wants when she wants it."
As for Taylor, she admitted in theLost Tapesdocumentary that the only thing she and Fisher had in common was Todd.
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"I never loved Eddie. I liked him. I felt sorry for him. And I liked talking [to him]. But he was not Mike," she said, adding, "As a matter of fact, I don't remember too much about my marriage to him, except it was one big, friggin' awful mistake. I knew it before we were married and didn't know how to get out of it."
The betrayal wounded Reynolds, but she came to terms with it, saying, "He wanted her, so he left. He was the selfish one. Love blinds all."
The two women reconciled after Taylor left Fisher for Burton and apologized.
"I don't know why I did it, and I certainly was wrong. But look what I have now," Taylor said, referring to Burton.
A woman of few regrets, shetold Larry Kingin May 2006 that she had only one: "I'm sorry if I ever hurt anyone. That's all."
"We were like two atom bombs"
After five years, Taylor split up with Fisher, having met and fallen for Burton on the set ofCleopatrain 1962. OnElizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar, Taylor recalled when Burton was cast as Antony to her Cleopatra.
"The first day on the set,he was hungover and very vulnerable, and his hands were shaking," Taylor said in a voiceover from an old recorded interview. "He asked me to hold a coffee cup up to his lips, and I was gone."
Their first on-screen kiss lasted so long that director Joseph Mankiewicz finally asked, "Does it interest you that it's time for lunch?"
Over the next 14 years, theymarried and divorced twice. Burton described her as "an eternal one-night stand." Of their chemistry, Taylor said, "We were like two atom bombs."
Three years after Burton's death in August 1984 from a brain hemorrhage at age 58, Taylorwrote him a letter: "You so pervade my thoughts and my very inner mood that it's like you are in me. I have you, but holy God I don't!"
In June 2010, Taylor opened up toVanity Fairabout her lifelong love with Burton, saying (via the BBC), "Attentive, loving — that was Richard, from those first moments in Rome [filmingCleopatra], we were always madly and powerfully in love. We had more time but not enough."
"I ended up in a tweed suit"
Life with her sixth husband, John Warner, was tame in comparison to her past relationships. The couple met on a blind date to a bicentennial dinner withQueen Elizabeth IIat the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.
The evening went well. Warner told PEOPLE in March 2011 that the actress liked that he owned a horse farm, explaining, "I think she fell in love with the farm, and I guess I came along with the horses."
They got engaged in September 1976 and married that December on Warner's farm in Virginia.
"Well, I thought we would get married, live on the farm, raise horses," Taylor told former CNN host King in 2001,per NBC Washington. "... And I thought it would be all very sort of farmish, and jobby, horsey, and I could have animals, and I would go out and brand the cattle."
When Warner campaigned for a U.S. Senate seat, Taylor went on the road with him to help him campaign — and was told not to wear her purple pantsuit.
"I ended up in a tweed suit," she told designer Michael Kors when heinterviewed her forHarper's Bazaarin 2006. "Me. Little tweed suits. What I won't do for love."
Warner won, and Taylor felt incredibly alone when her husband was working in the Senate. They would separate for 14 months before divorcing in November 1982. TaylortoldThe New York Timesin September 2002 that they both knew they weren't the loves of each other's lives.
"But we loved each other," she said. "We got along wonderfully until he decided to be a politician. And then he married the Senate."
Warner retired from the Senate in 2009. He died in May 2021 at age 94,perThe Guardian.
"You can't have love without respect"
Taylor and construction worker Larry Fortensky met while in rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic.
"I knew who she was, of course, but I can't tell you that I remember watching any of her films," Fortensky told PEOPLE in April 2011 of meeting Taylor for the first time. "She was funny and sweet, and the more I got to know her, the sweeter she became."
They were happy on their wedding day in October 1991. The nuptials were a big eventattended by Taylor's famous friendsand hosted byMichael Jackson, who walked Taylor down the aisle with her eldest son, Michael.
After five years of marriage, the pair parted ways in October 1996.
"Those cameras everywhere. Elizabeth was used to it. I never got used to it," Fortensky said.
Taylor later said of Fortensky, "He stopped working. You can't have love without respect."
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