Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor dies at 79

Hollywood legend and violet-eyed beauty Elizabeth Taylor dies at 79.

LOS ANGELES: Hollywood legend and violet-eyed beauty Elizabeth Taylor, famed as much for her glamorous but stormy love life as her five-decade long Oscar-winning film career, died Wednesday aged 79.

Taylor, arguably the last great star of Hollywood's golden era, died six weeks after being admitted to Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai hospital with congestive heart failure, a condition she had struggled with for years.

"My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love," said her son Michael Wilding, adding she was surrounded by her children when she died.

Taylor won two Academy Awards for best actress, including in the 1966 classic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? one of many films she played opposite Richard Burton.

The Welsh-born actor was one of the great loves of Taylor's life, she married and divorced him twice, but her stormy relationships off-screen and eight marriages often overshadowed her glittering film career.

In her later years she became known for her activism to raise funds to fight AIDS/HIV: no celebrity, except perhaps Princess Diana, has been so involved in raising funds for research into a cure, or working to dispel the stigma surrounding the illness.

Taylor "leaves a monumental legacy that has improved and extended millions of lives and will enrich countless more for generations to come," said the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). Taylor was the group's founding international chairwoman.

As her health failed in later years, she retired from the public gaze, although she notably attended the 2009 funeral of her long-time friend Michael Jackson.

"Her artistic contribution to the motion picture industry is immeasurable, her talent endured the test of time and transcended generations of moviegoers," said Chris Dodd, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America.

"She truly was an American icon," he added.

J D Heyman, editor of People magazine, the Hollywood celebrity bible, said: "Elizabeth Taylor may have been the greatest movie star that Hollywood ever produced.

"She was one of the great beauties of the 20th century and I don't think we'll see another movie star like her," he told CNN.

Born in London on February 27, 1932, she was evacuated to California with her American parents in 1939, where she was soon discovered at her father's art gallery by the fiancee of the chairman of Universal Studios.

She debuted in 1942 in There's One Born Every Minute, and by 1944 had become a child star with National Velvet, the story of a girl who rides her horse to victory at the Grand National disguised as a boy.

She married for the first time in 1950, aged 18, to playboy hotel chain heir Nicky Hilton. The marriage lasted 203 days, collapsing amid verbal and physical abuse after a lavish Hollywood wedding and a three-month European honeymoon.

Taylor moved on, and by 1952 she had tied the knot with British matinee idol Michael Wilding, 19 years her senior. They had two children, Michael Jr. and Christopher.

Though Taylor said Wilding gave her stability, it wasn't enough. She filed for divorce in 1956, and within days of the separation producer Michael Todd, 49, proposed.

Tough and domineering, Todd was Taylor's first great love. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Frances, in August 1957, but seven months later tragedy struck: Todd was killed in a plane crash in New Mexico.

Devastated, Taylor was accompanied at Todd's funeral by his best friend, singer Eddie Fisher, with whom she launched an affair, and married in 1959.

She won her first Oscar for best actress in 1960 for her portrayal of a high-class call girl in Butterfield 8.

Then came Cleopatra (1962) which she called "surely the most bizarre piece of entertainment ever perpetrated." On the set, she met the also-married Burton.

Following a pair of divorces, the two married in March 1964 in Montreal. But by time they were filming Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the harrowing portrayal of a marriage torn by booze, bitterness and failure mirrored their own.

They divorced in June, 1974 and remarried in October of the following year in Botswana, only to divorce again in August, 1976.

The marriage left Taylor an alcoholic, and her career in decline. A seventh marriage to Virginia senator John Warner, from 1976 to 1982, failed to cure the blues.

In and out of California's Betty Ford Clinic in the 1980s, Taylor overcame her alcoholism and a dependence on painkillers and emerged as a champion in the cause of AIDS victims.

In 1991, she stunned the world by marrying husband No. 8: Larry Fortensky, a 40-year-old construction worker she met in rehab. They parted amicably three years later.

As well as her children, Taylor is survived by 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.