Elizabeth Taylor passes away

Double Oscar-winning actress dies aged 79...

14:03 23 March 2011

Screen icon Dame Elizabeth Taylor has passed away at the age of 79.

The double Oscar-winning actress died from congestive heart failure in a Los Angeles hospital on 22 March.

Dame Elizabeth had a long history of ill health and had suffered from the heart condition since 2004.

She was one of the 20th Century's biggest movie stars, best known for her roles in National Velvet and Cleopatra, alongside Richard Burton.

The peak of her film career came in the 1950s and 60s, when she was nominated for four Oscars in a row, winning two for Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

The actress was married eight times to seven husbands, the most famous being to co-star Burton, whom she married in 1964.

By this time, Elizabeth had already been married four times to Conrad Hilton, Michael Wilding, Michael Todd and Eddie Fisher.

The couple divorced and remarried in 1975, before Taylor moved on to further marriages with John W Warner and Larry Fortensky.

Despite her ill health, Dame Elizabeth had continued to campaign for her Aids charity, which she set up in 1991 after the death of her friend Rock Hudson.