Elizabeth Taylor’s best friend reveals Icon’s loves and lusts

At age 9, Taylor’s captivating looks began landing her film work, all under Sothern’s watchful eye.

“My father had arranged for my mother to leave the stage when she was 29, and she lived her life vicariously through me,” Taylor explained.

Although she enjoyed performing, the pressure was great.

‘I paid the bills [from] from the moment I started working,” she said, confessing to Barbara Walters in 1999 that Francis found her financial success so difficult to accept that he sometimes “kind of made fun of me” when he drank.

“When I left home and had my own child,” she said, “I started thinking about my father and how it must have felt for him to have his nine-year-old daughter making more money than him.”

Taylor rose to fame at the age of 12 with 1944s National Velvetand her fame increased work demands in the coming years, leaving little time for fun.

“I wasn’t allowed to date. That left me with no real inner self-confidence,” says Taylor, who tried to spread her wings at 18 by marrying hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton.

‘I left the house as quickly as I could. When I had to swear in front of the Archbishop that I would be a good wife, I kept my fingers crossed behind my back because I didn’t know. I was still a child.’