Elizabeth Taylor has made public for the first time a series of love letters she received from Richard Burton, whom she married twice
Elizabeth Taylor has made public for the first time a series of love letters she received from Richard Burton, whom she married twiceElizabeth Taylor (78) has made public for the first time a series of love letters she received from Richard Burton during one of Hollywood's greatest and most volatile romances.
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| Whirlwind romance: The couple in Switzerland on February 1, 1974. They divorced later that year. file Pic/Getty images |
Burton bares his soul in the letters, even suggesting he will commit suicide if she leaves him. "If you leave me I shall have to kill myself. There is no life without you," Burton wrote.u00a0 In one letter he praises Taylor's acting while describing the profession as "sissified and ridiculous" for a "really proper man."
Extracts from the love letters will be published in Vanity Fair this week and are taken from a book Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century.
In one letter, he called Taylor "probably the best actress in the world" and praised her "extraordinary and unique beauty."
When things were not going well in their notoriously stormy relationship Burton wrote, "You must know, of course, how much I love you. You must know, of course, how badly I treat you. But the fundamental and most vicious, swinish, murderous, and unchangeable fact is that we totally misunderstand each other. We operate on alien waveÂlengths. You are as distant as Venus and I am tone-deaf to the music of the spheres. I love you and I always will. Come back to me as soon as you can."
The romance between Burton and Taylor began on the sets of Cleopatra in 1961 when both were already married. They wed in 1964 but divorced in 1974. The following year they remarried in a remote village in Botswana, but they were divorced again less than a year later.
Final letterTaylor received a final letter from Burton, sent three days before his death, in which he hinted at a reunion.
The poignant letter was sent on August 2, 1984, just before he died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage at the age of 58.
It was waiting for Taylor when she returned home after attending his memorial service. She still keeps it in her bedside drawer.
In it Burton said he was "happiest" when he was with Taylor and that he wants to "come home." He wrote that no one else could know what their lives had been together and asked if it was possible there could be "another chance" for them.
Taylor said, "Richard was magnificent in every sense of the word. From those first moments in Rome we were always madly and powerfully in love."
8, the number of times Elizabeth Taylor has been married
