Elizabeth Taylor dies aged 79

Hollywood legend and violet-eyed beauty Elizabeth Taylor, famed as much for her glamorous but stormy love life as her five-decade Oscar-winning film career, has died aged 79.

Taylor, arguably the last great star of Hollywood's golden era, died six weeks after being admitted to Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles with congestive heart failure, a condition she had struggled with for years.

"My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humour and love," said her son Michael Wilding Jr, adding that she was surrounded by her children when she died.

Taylor won two Academy Awards for best actress, including in the 1966 classic Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, one of many films she played opposite Richard Burton.

The Welsh-born actor was one of the great loves of Taylor's life - she married and divorced him twice - but her stormy relationships off-screen and eight marriages often overshadowed her glittering film career.

In her later years she blazed a trail as an activist to raise funds to fight AIDS/HIV, working hard to support research into a cure and dispel the stigma surrounding the illness.

"Her legacy improved the lives of millions of people and will continue for many generations to come," said longtime activist AIDS Kevin Frost who heads the Foundation for AIDS Research, co-founded by Taylor.

As her health failed in later years, she retired from the public gaze although she notably attended the 2009 funeral of her longtime friend Michael Jackson.

Tributes have poured in from across the world, as actors and directors mourn Taylor's passing.

"I am very sad. We have lost a memorable person who I was fortunate enough to know and work with on two films," Italian director Franco Zeffirelli told ANSA news agency.

"People like Liz don't exist anymore... because fairytales no longer exist."

Pop superstar Sir Elton John, who is also a huge campaigner for AIDS awareness, said the actress had been one of the towering figures of Hollywood.

"We have just lost a Hollywood giant. More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being," he said.

JD Heyman, editor of People magazine, the Hollywood celebrity bible, said: "Elizabeth Taylor may have been the greatest movie star Hollywood ever produced.

"She was one of the great beauties of the 20th century and I don't think we'll see another movie star like her."

Life and love

Born in London on February 27, 1932, she was evacuated to California with her American parents in 1939, where she was soon discovered at her father's art gallery by the fiancee of the chairman of Universal Studios.

She debuted in 1942 in There's One Born Every Minute and by 1944 had become a child star with National Velvet, the story of a girl who rides her horse to victory at the Grand National disguised as a boy.

She married for the first time in 1950, aged 18, to playboy hotel chain heir Conrad "Nicky" Hilton.

The marriage lasted 203 days, collapsing amid verbal and physical abuse after a lavish Hollywood wedding and a three-month European honeymoon.

Taylor moved on and by 1952 she had tied the knot with British matinee idol Michael Wilding, 19 years her senior. They had two children, Michael Jr and Christopher.

Though Taylor said Wilding gave her stability, it was not enough. She filed for divorce in 1956, and within days of the separation producer Michael Todd, 49, proposed.

Tough and domineering, Todd was Taylor's first great love. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Frances, in August 1957, but seven months later tragedy struck - Todd was killed in a plane crash in New Mexico.

Devastated, Taylor was accompanied at Todd's funeral by his best friend, singer Eddie Fisher - with whom she launched an affair and married in 1959.

She won her first Oscar for best actress for her portrayal of a high-class call girl in Butterfield 8 (1960).

Then came Cleopatra in 1962, which she called "surely the most bizarre piece of entertainment ever perpetrated". On the set, she met the also-married Burton.

Following a pair of divorces, the two married in March 1964 in Montreal. But by the time they were filming 1966's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, the movie's harrowing portrayal of a marriage torn apart by booze, bitterness and failure mirrored their own lives.

They divorced in June, 1974 and remarried in October of the following year in Botswana, only to divorce again in August, 1976.

The marriage left Taylor an alcoholic and her career in decline. A seventh marriage to Virginia senator John Warner, from 1976 to 1982, failed to cure the blues.

In and out of California's Betty Ford Clinic in the 1980s, Taylor overcame her alcoholism and a dependence on painkillers and emerged as a champion in the cause of AIDS sufferers.

In 1991 she stunned the world by marrying husband number eight, Larry Fortensky, a 40-year-old construction worker she met in rehab. They parted amicably three years later.

As well as her children, Taylor is survived by 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.