National Velvet to a national treasure:
Elizabeth Taylor - a life in pictures

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 4:53 PM on 23rd March 2011

Elizabeth Taylor made her big screen debut in National Velvet in 1944 and went on to appear in dozens of movies, including Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Cleopatra and Butterfield 8. But with public interest in her tempestuous personal life, she became one of the most photographed women of all time. Here, in no particular order, is a selection of her most iconic moments...

Scorching: Taylor smouldered on screen including in the 1958 classic Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Come to bed eyes: Elizabeth Taylor smouldered on screen, including in the 1958 classic Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Elizabeth Taylor on the balcony of the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden

Fashionable: Elizabeth Taylor visits famed dressmakers the Fontana Sisters on a visit to Rome in 1953 and tries on a cocktail frock in black and white silk and on a balcony in Stockholm in the same year

Bathing beauty: Elizabeth Taylor in a scene from the 1959 film Suddenly Last Summer

All grown up: Taylor in Butterfield 8 in 1961 (right) - a performance which was a far cry from her big screen debut in National Velvet in 1944 when she was 12 (left)

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Elizabeth Taylor, pictured with her fifth husband, Richard Taylor, who also became her sixth

Look of love: Elizabeth Taylor, pictured with her fifth husband, Richard Taylor, whom she was married to from 1964-74 - and again from 1975-76

Elizabeth Taylor is shown in costume for her character in the 1957 film Raintree County

Fresh-faced beauty: Elizabeth Taylor as a 14-year-old in 1946 and in costume in the 1957 film Raintree County (right)

Decadent: Elizabeth Taylor stars as the amoral wife Zee Blakeley in Zee and Co (1972)

Proud mother: Elizabeth Taylor with second husband Michael Wilding and baby Michael Jr in 1953

Passions fired: Elizabeth Taylor with fifth husband Richard Burton in Montreal in 1964

Fine figure: Elizabeth Taylor was never backward in realising her assets, from a majestic performance in Cleopatra (1963) to her swimsuit photoshoot of 1953

Latest heart-throb: Elizabeth Taylor leave Annabel's nightclub in Mayfair with George Hamilton in 2001

Elizabeth Taylor and her husband Larry Fortensky attend an AIDS fund-raising event at The Mirabelle restaurant in Mayfair, London

Husband No.8: Taylor with Larry Fortensky at an Aids benefit in Mayfair soon after they married in 1991 and, right, the couple in 1985

History in the making: Elizabeth Taylor with Zev Buffman, the producer of her 1981 debut Broadway show The Little Foxes

Leading men: Taylor with Richard Burton in The Taming Of The Shrew in 1967 (left) and with Robert Taylor in Ivanhoe in 1952

Flowers in her hair Elizabeth Taylor sits on a sofa kissing Richard Burton, her fifth husband on their first wedding day, in 1964, and with seventh husband John Warner after her return to the stage in 1981

Always in love: Elizabeth Taylor and fourth husband Eddie Fisher arrive at the Dorchester Hotel in 1960 and with husband No.7 John Warner (whom she married in 1976)