Elizabeth Taylor A Private Life for Public Consumption by Ellis Cashmore

Elizabeth Taylor A Private Life for Public Consumption by Ellis Cashmore is a Bloomsbury book. I really appreciated to read it. I enjoyed to seeing Liz Taylor in various movies like Cleopatra, The Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with another beautiful star like Paul Newman and, of course, at first, Lassie.

Reading this book, you will discover the story of the star in a fascinating and captivating way.
The book is written with a very fluid writing-style and will capture the attention of the reader 'till the end. It happened to me, it will happen to you as well.
Liz Taylor's life, like also the one of Michael Jackson or other stars in the system since they were little kids has been always "altered" by media, by photographers.
It hasn't never been normal in our most common sense of the word. She hasn't never discover the word privacy.

I didn't know that also when very young she suffered of so many disturbs and illness in particular pneumonia with which she hardly fought with a tracheotomy when very young. Liz Taylor had a frail health and fell sick often.
She suffered of anxiety and she was cured because of it with a medicine taking also Xanax for staying more happy and cheerful. It is also known that she loved to drink alcohol sometimes.
But what I remember the most of this lady is her class and beauty, her perfume Passion (beautiful story this one; Liz Taylor was the real first testimonial of a perfume something unusual for that times) her book I presented to a girlfriend of mine at the high school telling her: "If Taylor lost a lot of pounds for staying well, you can do that for sure losing just few pounds for being back to the normality" and her fight against AIDS that brought her to be the most important testimonial and crusader of massive found rising for trying to defeat this illness.
Maybe as wrote the author of the book, without her in first line the success obtained by the organization created by her amfAR fighting against AIDS wouldn't never have been so large and strong.
But Liz Taylor lost many friends with this horrible illness in particular Rock Hudson with which she also played in The Giant the movie where James Dean lost also his life in a terrible car incident.
She didn't forget his friends, she didn't forget that this illness started with a homosexual act in the gay community of NYC and later spread also in common heterosexual people, had and must find a cure, because everyone must have dignity and a moment of pleasure mustn't become perennial horror and discrimination.

I loved to read about her relationship with Tim Burton when they filmed Cleopatra. She was married with Fisher at that time.
He was married, but you know baby, this one is Hollywood.
They fell in love in our Rome and it was a scandal for our catholic Italy.
The two lived a tormented but beautiful relationship, and they became wife and husband two times, losing themselves in the eyes of the other one and also when they moved on with their own lives they didn't forget.

After the end of their relationship Liz Taylor married at some point Warren a senator. For some years she lived like a shadow close to him although press followed them very closely. Her hair, her make-up, her dresses. She was a beautiful woman.

Later, tired to be Warren's wife, divorced by him and returned to enjoy some moment of collaboration with his most important man: Burton. Burton was frequently sick and died abruptly at just 58 years.

The relationship with press, media and the so-called paparazzi, with an extensive story also of the born of this word, and via Veneto and La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini largely treated in the book.


I thank NetGalley and Bloomsbury for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori