The role that saw Elizabeth Taylor reach rock bottom: “I never would have gone to see it, ever”
Few people embody the glitz, glamour, and hubris of Hollywood’s Golden Age quite like Elizabeth Taylor. After a successful career as a child star, Taylor would come to define a certain branch of femininity on screen. A double Oscar-winner, she was as famous for her turbulent personal life as she was for any of the roles that earned her a golden statuette. You don’t rack up seven marriages (to six different men) without a few tabloid headlines.
Sadly, as talented a performer as Dame Elizabeth was, nobody is immune to bad movies. She appeared in a dire adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d in 1980. Not even a cast including Angela Lansbury, Tony Curtis, and Kim Novak could rescue that one. The Blue Bird from 1976 was supposed to be a symbol of peace between the United States and the Soviet Union, but it ended up (pardon the pun) bombing. Then there’s her final cinematic role in The Flintstones. We really don’t need to spend much time on that.
It turns out that a film didn’t need to be panned by critics for Taylor to despise it. She famously didn’t enjoy working on Butterfield 8, the movie that landed her a ‘Best Actress’ Oscar. She also wasn’t super keen on another of her most iconic gigs – the eponymous Queen of the Nile in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s historical drama Cleopatra.
In an issue of Life from 1964, one year after the movie’s release, Taylor gave her candid thoughts on the picture. “I’m afraid Cleopatra may have been rather a low point,” she revealed. “The only things I was proud of in Cleopatra, Fox cut out with unerring accuracy – that is, the core of the characterisation. I never would have gone to see it, ever, but the British Embassy trapped me. I was in London, and they asked me to take the Bolshoi Ballet as my guests to a screening of Cleopatra. Afterwards, I raced back to the Dorchester Hotel and just made it into the downstairs lavatory – and I vomited.”
At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss Taylor’s concerns as little more than diva-ish egotism. Cleopatra is widely regarded as a classic. It was the highest-earning movie of the entire year, despite almost bankrupting its studio with its insane production costs, and her portrayal of the female Pharaoh is baked into the very fabric of cinematic legend. But there’s more to this tale of love and betrayal than meets the eye.
Firstly, the production of Cleopatra was a troubled one. Taylor would have been privy to so many different variations of the movie from the one that eventually came out, so it’s entirely possible that she became fond of one of them and was then disappointed when the powers that be went in a different direction. Secondly, this is where Taylor first met Richard Burton. The Welshman, who plays Mark Antony, began an affair with his co-star, leading to one of the first major scandals in celebrity history. It’s possible that the effect the film had on Taylor’s personal reputation might cloud her judgment of it.
Whatever the reason, it’s sad to think that Taylor wasn’t pleased with a performance that is now so tightly associated with her. She might not have loved Cleopatra, but plenty of others would be more than willing to disagree.
