Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Elizabeth Taylor: The Sublime Performance of Her Face

 

Perhaps it is the sublime performance of her face. Her perfect nose… violet/blue eyes that turn whatever color you want. Beauty is an accident that never waits to happen.

She remains a movie star, a celluloid daemon that only asks for light to live. We see her as a child, already fluent with assumed attitudes and false fronts. Then, a young woman, soon to mount the golden throne, unassailable, Cleopatra-like, the greatest of them all.

Then the illness, the awards, the husbands, the lovers—all that is demanded by a wayward congregation, always on tiptoes, eyes above the crowd, praying for just a glimpse of the Queen as she enters a long, dark limousine.

A better actor than accredited by critics, her supernova publicity was too blinding to clearly see a performance. Her fame exceeded skill, always a dangerous condition, but one that she embraced, selling toiletries one day, AIDS awareness the next.

For few ever had such a clinical understanding of Hollywood as Elizabeth Taylor. It used her, she used it. Simple, honest, and as coarse as the Hollywood sign itself.

Gratefully, movie stars cannot be manufactured. There are too many unknowns that must intertwine.  The magic remains with the magician. Those most committed to celestial heights embrace an entrepreneurial spiritualism. They just seem to know what to sell, when, and to whom.

Somehow, against all odds, Elizabeth Taylor discovered how to fall deeply and passionately in love with herself.

 


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