The loves of her life

The actress who reached the height of her fame in the Swinging Sixties described herself as old-fashioned.

She married again and again because of what she called her “puritanical upbringing. I couldn’t just have a romance,” she once said. “It had to be marriage.”

She said every divorce was like “a little death” but her pain was the tabloids’ gain. Journalists slavishly chronicled the ups and downs of each one of her eight marriages.

Conrad “Nicky” Nicholson Hilton

1950

When she was just 18, Taylor married Hilton in one of the most publicized Hollywood unions of the early 1950s. Hilton was Catholic so the couple was married by a priest, and a lavish reception was held at the Bel-Air Country Club.

Hilton began drinking on their wedding night and seldom stopped. After the honeymoon Taylor went home to her mother and filed for divorce.

Michael Wilding

1952-1957

Two years later, Taylor married British actor Michael Wilding. Compared to her other marriages, this one was uneventful. She later said the couple had a “lovely, easy life, very simple and very quiet. Two babies were born. We had friends. We didn’t do much."

Mike Todd

1957-1958

Taylor moved on to Mike Todd, the dynamic producer of Broadway shows. He swept the young actress off her feet – even though she was still married to Wilding at the time.

"He had a joy, a relish about being alive, a vitality that was so contagious," she wrote. "He was a fabulous con artist – could con the gold out of your teeth – but was terribly, gregariously generous."

Sadly, Todd died when his private plane crashed in New Mexico in 1958.

Eddie Fisher

1959-1964

Taylor’s marriage to the famous singer and entertainers was a big scandal because, when the two started their affair, he was still married to American sweetheart Debbie Reynolds.

Taylor was branded a "home wrecker" for allegedly breaking up that marriage.

Two years after she married Fischer, she met a dashing British actor on the set of the movie, Cleopatra.

Richard Burton

1964-1974

1975-1976

Burton, who had a reputation for hard living, was taken with Taylor right away. “Has anybody ever told you that you’re a very pretty girl?" he said. Her reaction: "Here’s the great lover, the great wit, the great intellectual of Wales, and he comes out with a line like that!"

They fell in love while making the movie and went on to have a tempestuous relationship that fascinated their clamoring public.

They divorced their respective spouses and got married in 1964. The marriage fell apart ten years later and they divorced. But they couldn’t stay apart for long. They got married again the following year.

John W. Warner

1976-1982

Taylor turned her attention to politics in the mid-70s and married U.S. Senator John W. Warner. They were divorced six years later. "Being a senator’s wife is not easy," she told a reporter. "It’s very lonely. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” she later said.

Larry Fortensky

1991-1996

Fortensky was arguably the least likely of all Taylor’s husbands. She met the 37-year-old construction worker while they were both undergoing treatment at the Betty Ford Center.

She married Fortensky at Michael Jackson’s ranch as tabloid photographers peered down from helicopters.

But the unusual pairing was not meant to be. They announced their trial separation in 1995 and divorced the following year.