Elizabeth Taylor's father harshly criticized her when she began her affair with Richard Burton, calling her ‘a whore.’
According to recently discovered conversations included in Nanette Burstein's documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (now available on Max), the late star revealed that word of their romance led to personal attacks from everyone, even the Pope and her father.
The two-time Oscar winner says, "My father called me a whore," during one of the taped interviews with the late journalist Richard Meryman, which was captured between 1964 and 1965.
Her decision to divorce her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher, in favour of Burton, who was also married to Sybil Christopher, was met with strong hostility from everyone, she claims.
She said, “I met such opposition from everyone.”
According to her, Roddy McDowall, a costar in Lassie Come Home and a lifelong friend of Taylor's, was among many who disapproved.
To note, on the set of her much-postponed historical blockbuster Cleopatra, in which she portrayed the title character and Burton played Mark Antony, Taylor met with Burton.
Following Fisher's 1959 separation from Debbie Reynolds to marry Taylor, which many viewed as scandalous, news of their on-set romance surfaced in 1962.
The couple faced an unusual level of public backlash at the time.
