Icons: Elizabeth Taylor

Originally posted on www.differentscene.co.uk

Last week we looked Judy Garland, often considered a great gay icon because of her troubled personal life. This week I’m looking at Elizabeth Taylor, but not for her highly publicised personal life.

Miss Taylor is definitely an icon of the golden age of Hollywood, that is undisputable, but it’s because of her extensive charity work and campaigning for funding for HIV and AIDS related charities and projects that give her a place as a gay icon.

Yes, she was a huge film star, starting as child actress she went on to become the highest paid actress in Hollywood in the early 1960’s when she received and unprecedented $1 million fee for her role in Cleopatra, she was also a two time Academy Award winning actress and received numerous other awards and success throughout her 60 year career. Her personal life was highly documented due to her love of wedding rings, she was married eight times and two of those were to Richard Burton.

Yes, Liz Taylor lived an exceptional life, but it was during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s where she gained her prominence as an advocate for the gay community and truly became a gay icon.

Spurred on by the death of her good friend and fellow actor Rock Hudson who eventually died of the disease, Taylor became one of the first notable celebrities to help raise money to help fight the disease, back in a time when a number of people still refused to acknowledge it at all. During her time as an advocate for helping to fight the illness Taylor helped raise over $270 million for HIV and AIDS related charities and projects, and set up and organised the first AIDS fundraiser back in 1984, a brave thing for someone to do back then.

In 1985 during the year that Rock Hudson lost his life to the disease, Taylor helped co-found the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and also founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) in 1993.

Taylor was a great in woman, and by standing up for something she truly believed in back when it was still a hugely taboo subject shows that she truly embodies every notion of the word icon.

Sadly Taylor passed away in March of this year leaving behind a huge gap, as there will never be another like here.

As former president Bill Clinton said following her death, “Elizabeth’s legacy will live on in many people around the world whose lives will be longer and better because of her work and the ongoing efforts of those she inspired.”