Actress Elizabeth Taylor passed away this morning. She was 79.

Taylor burst onto the Hollywood scene at the age of 12 with her performance in National Velvet. The peak of her career took place from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s as she was nominated for five Academy Awards and won two Best Actress statues for BUtterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In later years, Taylor became better known for her marriages and health problems than for her acting. In all, she was married eight times to seven different men. She was twice married to Richard Burton and once married to former Virginia Republican Senator John Warner.

I remember Taylor being a frequent target of Joan Rivers in the early 1980s because of her weight although the two did eventually bury the hatchet. As I recall, they joined forces for an AIDS benefit. Taylor became associated with raising money for AIDS charities after her friend Rock Hudson went public with his condition.