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Movies & TV

The last of the movie stars

There can never be another star like Elizabeth Taylor.

Her love life created the gossip industry. Her face inspired a new movie mag business. She had nerve, she had beauty and she had talent. And when she reached the age when female stars are disposed of by Hollywood like a used tissue, she re-invented herself as the most powerful AIDS activist in the world.

The only contemporary star that comes even close to the Taylor brand is Angelina Jolie.

Jolie’s face has been fetishized almost as much as Taylor’s was both onscreen and in the movie magazines women lapped up at the beauty parlour. Directors knew what to do with Taylor’s. Just look at the first shot of her in Suddenly Last Summer. We’ve been hearing all about her, character the traumatized Catherine, for a third of the movie before we see her. Montogomery Clift as her doctor comes to the door of a room where he sees her facing the camera. When he calls her name and she turns around, she is jaw-droppingly beautiful. When she apologizes for her shabby dress, it is to laugh.

Jolie makes those kinds of entrances in all her sexy thrillers, the equivalent of those cheese pics Taylor made with Burton after Cleopatra. And you’re similarly gobsmacked by her beauty.

Like Taylor, who lured Eddie Fisher away from the all-American goody two-shoes – at least image-wise – Debbie Reynolds, Jolie’s got the stain of the homewrecker, having stolen Brad Pitt from nice girl Jennifer Aniston.

But Taylor gave the gossip columnists so much to feast on, her tumultuous relationship with fourth husband Richard Burton and four marriages after that. Jolie, even considering her stint with loose cannon Billy Bob Thornton before the Pitt affair, is positively staid, by comparison, hanging in with Pitt and her ever increasing brood. Poor Jennifer Aniston appears in what remains of the tabs more than Jolie.

Jolie has acting chops, too, possibly better than Taylor’s, though Oscar has recognized both of them. But we haven’t seen Jolie fatten up for a role or completely downplay her beauty the way Taylor did in her powerful performance as Martha in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. Jolie hasn’t shown that much nerve quite yet. And where Taylor made a few cheesy flicks with Burton to pay the bills, Jolie chooses to do high-priced actioners instead.

We have no idea how Jolie will manage when she passes Hollywood’s best before date. Reporters and photographers were brutal to Taylor once she’d lost her luster and started gaining weight. The paparazzi were there in droves to shoot the puffed up Taylor as she battled substance abuse and her addiction to food. When she was lustful and flaunted her diamonds, the media hordes loved her excess. But when excess got the better of her, they were unremittingly cruel.

Then, as Taylor’s star began to fade and she stopped making movies, the AIDs crisis peaked and she stepped in, helping to raise millions of dollars for AIDS research. It was during these times that you could appreciate the size of her heart. She had a profound understanding of the meaning of celebrity, had always had a love-hate relationship with hers, but then made the decision to use her fame for humanitarian purposes. She knew perfectly well that people came to the AIDs benefits just to be in her orbit and that was fine with her. Just show her the money.

Then again, she was always a great friend, gathering up her troubled colleagues throughout her life, from the tortured Montgomery Clift to the tragic and talented Michael Jackson. A child star herself, she had sympathy for those who had been through that wringer and been famous all there lives. Like NOW’s Norman Wilner commented, the loneliness never seemed to leave her eyes.

Jolie’s got her humanitarian credits, too, but she can’t take the place of Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor was so much a product of her time. In those days, the stars were mysterious, larger than life. Now the media who kept them that way – the tabs that are circling the drain, the movie mags that have gone down – have been replaced in a new media world interested more in the takedown of movie stars than in their glorification.

With the passing of Taylor, so goes an era.

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