The reigning box-office star of her day, Dame Elizabeth Taylor was a rare combination of beauty and talent. Unfortunately, her life - unlike her films - has not been a series of Hollywood endings. The two-time Oscar winner has gone through husbands the same way some of us go through tissues, marrying eight times (twice to Richard Burton), and has been beset by a series of illnesses.

Taylor's 40 operations (including an emergency tracheotomy) led her to become overly dependent on pills and alcohol to dull the pain. On top of it all, Taylor was famously difficult to work with and was known to travel with an entourage of pets and assistants long before J.Lo made it fashionable to do so.

According to Bette Davis, "The real problem was that she bought the little lost princess image invented for her at MGM."