No other star compares to Elizabeth Taylor in terms of renown, glitz, and bravery. She is a legend famed for her beauty and her captivating screen presence in a career that lasted much of the twentieth century and nearly sixty films. She was the final big star to emerge from the old Hollywood studio system. Nonetheless, her personal life was more interesting than her Academy Award-winning on-screen performances. She was married eight times to seven different men during the course of her seventy-nine years of erratic love and grief. She was above all a survivor; by the time she was twenty-six, she had already gone through two divorces and one widowhood. Her life was a soap opera that came to an end when she became the first big star in a profoundly meaningful way.