Elizabeth Taylor’s close friend is revealing intimate new details about the screen icon’s love life.
The new Fox Nation docuseries, “Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar,” which was executive produced by Kim Kardashian, has reignited interest in the legendary actress’s storied romances.
Now, Vicky Tiel, who shared a long friendship with Taylor and served as the late actress’s stylist, has named which of the star’s seven husbands she called “the best in bed.”
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Tiel told People magazine that Taylor’s favorite lover was Richard Burton, the late acclaimed actor whom the actress married and divorced twice after first falling in love on the set of the 1963 movie “Cleopatra.”
“Absolutely. No question about it. Her lover for life was Richard,” Tiel shared.
“She was very fun,” Tiel continued. “She took sex very lightly. She taught me a lot too; if something bad happens, you just roll your eyes, smile and don’t worry about it. She would just always laugh and be happy. She was a very, very happy person.”
Tiel recalled that though the pair ultimately did not stay together, their love for each other endured.
The fashion designer remembered having a conversation with Burton shortly before he passed away from a brain hemorrhage in August 1984 at the age of 58. Tiel told People that he shared a message that he wanted her and her then-husband, makeup artist Ron Berkeley, to give Taylor.
“Before Richard died, I think two days before, he called me up,” Tiel recalled. “He said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to live very long, and I just wanted you and Ron to tell Elizabeth I’ll always love her the most. I love her forever and ever. And I miss her and I love her with all my heart.’”
Tiel said that she visited Taylor at her Bel-Air home not long after Burton’s death.
“She’s taking a bath,” Tiel remembered. “She said, ‘Well, come on in the bathtub.’ So I go in the bathroom. She’s got a bathtub, and all the way around is a ledge around her bathtub. It’s all frames of diamond edges; not real, but I mean, gorgeous frames, maybe 20 frames surrounding the bathtub.
“It was all pictures of her and Richard,” she said.
During her lifetime, Taylor was married to hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr. from 1950 to 1951, actor Michael Wilding from 1952 to 1957, producer Mike Todd from 1957 until his death in 1958, singer Eddie Fisher from 1959 to 1964, Burton from 1964 to 1974 and again from 1975 to 1976, politician John Warner from 1976 to 1982, and construction worker Larry Fortensky from 1991 to 1996.
Over its three episodes, the docuseries delves into key aspects of Taylor’s life, including each of her marriages and particularly highlighted Taylor and Burton’s stormy romance, which became one of Hollywood’s most famous love matches.
Burton and Taylor did not fall in love at first sight during their initial meeting at a party, which happened a decade before they co-starred together in “Cleopatra.” Taylor was aware of Burton’s reputation as a womanizer and steered clear of the “1984” star.
In the docuseries, Joan Collins, who co-starred with Burton in 1957’s “Sea Wife,” remembered that the actor was known for “sleeping with all of his leading ladies.”
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“All actors made the passes at actresses,” Collins recalled. “They took it as their divine right.”
She continued, “And so when he made a pass at me and I rejected him, he said, ‘Oh, you can’t do that. You’ve broken my record.'”
However, sparks flew between Burton and Taylor while the two were filming “Cleopatra,” in which she played the titular Egyptian queen, and he portrayed Mark Antony, the Roman general and Cleopatra’s lover.
In archival footage featured in the documentary, Burton recalled meeting Taylor on the movie’s set.
“There was this strange, sphinx-like creature,” he said. “And I thought that she was probably the most unapproachable, unattainable and remarkable creature I’d ever seen. So I set out to attract her attention.”
In a voiceover from an archival clip, Taylor remembered the moment that she fell in love with Burton.
“The first day on the set, he was hungover and very vulnerable, and his hands were shaking,” she recalled. “He asked me to hold a coffee cup up to his lips, and I was gone.”
The pair began a torrid and highly-publicized extramarital affair. At the time, Taylor was married to Fisher and Burton to actress Sybil Burton, with whom he shared two daughters, Kate and Jessica.
Taylor’s son Christopher Wilding, who gave his first-ever on-camera interview in the docuseries, recalled thinking that his mother was unhappy in her marriage with Fisher at the time.
“It wasn’t a normal situation, and at that time, her attitude was, ‘F— it. I’m going to do it my way, and if you don’t like it, too bad.'” he said.
“The thing with Richard just happened,” Jorjanne Strumme, Taylor’s assistant and friend said.
“And it happened in such a passionate way,” she added. “It was galvanic and explosive and undeniable.”
Collins noted that Fisher, who had previously had an affair with Taylor when he was married to Debbie Reynolds, was aware of his wife’s infidelity with Burton.
“There was obviously something going on with Richard and Elizabeth, and Eddie knew about it,” she said.
“I remember it was a big dinner. Burton was there, and it was all extremely uncomfortable. Eddie was trying to make up with this Cartier bracelet, and she kind of tossed it aside. I said, ‘I’ll have it'” she recalled with a laugh.
“Everybody was appalled because it was just so obvious,” Collins added. “Eddie Fisher, he was just looking very crestfallen and beaten — a beaten man.”
Taylor and Burton’s affair was intensely covered by the media, and the scandal caught the attention of The Vatican, which condemned the co-stars and publicly denounced their “erotic vagrancy.”
In the docuseries, Christopher remembered how the media coverage of his mother’s scandalous romance affected him. Taylor shared Christopher and son Michael with her second husband, Michael Wilding.
“It was a huge drag,” he said. “When I went to boarding school, I would learn things about what they were up to by reading about it in the paper. All the other kids know about these stories. I’d hear, you know, unpleasant taunts. ‘Well, your mother just likes to sleep with a lot of guys’ or whatever.”
‘It was…awkward,” he continued. “When I was older, she expressed regret. She felt that she hadn’t been a great mom. I think she was a good mother. It wasn’t easy to do.”
In her interview, Kardashian weighed in on how parents’ fame can impact their children.
“You don’t plan this life for your kids,” she said. “You’re an adult, you can handle it. You don’t know which one of your babies can really handle it, so I think it’s really hard on a family. I think when people open themselves up to that scrutiny. It’s really hard just on your soul.”
In 1964, both Taylor and Burton divorced their spouses and married each other. The two went on to become one of Tinseltown’s most successful power couples, starring in 11 movies together, including “The V.I.P.s,””The Sandpiper,” “Anne of the Thousand Days,””The Taming of the Shrew” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
During their first marriage, the two, who were dubbed “Liz and Dick” by the media, adopted daughter Maria. In addition to Maria, Christopher and Michael, Taylor was also mother to daughter Liza, who she shared with her third husband, Mike Todd.
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Taylor and Burton’s marriage was known for being passionate and drama-filled. The two divorced for the first time in June 1974, but they soon reconciled. In October 1975, they tied the knot again during a secret ceremony in Botswana.
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“We exchanged rings, fathomless looks, and were married once again, back where we belonged. Always belonged,” Taylor wrote in a diary entry, according to Kate Andersen Brower, who penned the 2022 biography “Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour of an Icon.”
Yet the pair divorced again less than 10 months later in July 1976. “I love Richard with every fiber of my soul but we can’t be together. We’re too mutually destructive,” Taylor said.
Three weeks before his death, Burton told his brother, Graham, “Elizabeth and I never really split up. And we never will.”
Burton wrote Taylor one last letter days before he passed away. He described how he was at his happiest with her. Burton also wondered if they might have had another shot together. Taylor kept the note in a bedside drawer until her death at age 79 in March 2011.
“Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar” is streaming now on Fox Nation.
