Elizabeth Taylor’s darkest secrets revealed: Long lost tapes show how screen legend tried to kill herself during ‘awful’ marriage to A-lister and how her father insulted her when she hooked up with her next husband

Elizabeth Taylor has revealed that her own father called her a ‘whore’ after she left her husband Eddie Fisher for Richard Burton.

The late movie icon says that Francis Taylor was furious after she divorced Fisher in 1964 and married Burton 10 days later, an act which scandalized Hollywood and drew the ire of the Vatican.

In a new documentary, Taylor speaks from beyond the grave to say her marriage to Fisher was so unhappy she once tried to kill herself by overdosing on sleeping pills.

In ‘Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes’, which had its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Tuesday, she calls it ‘selfish’ because it would have been ruinous to her children.

Taylor also deflects some of the blame for getting involved with Fisher in the first place and says his marriage to ex-wife Debbie Reynolds was not perfect.

In the most biting part of the film, Taylor says that Reynolds’ shock at Fisher seeking a divorce was ‘such an act’ because she and Fisher were ‘unhappy’ despite their public image as sweethearts.

The film is based on 40 hours of recently discovered tapes and recordings that Taylor made in the 1960s, when she was at the peak of her fame, with journalist Richard Meryman.

There was also a 1985 interview with Dominick Dunne which is woven into the narrative.

The documentary is directed by Nanette Burstein, who previously directed ‘Hillary’ about Hillary Clinton and ‘The Kid Stays In The Picture,’ about the late film producer Robert Evans, and is due to come out on HBO in August.

Taylor was a celebrity from the age of 11 and became famous with her role in Lassie Come Home, which was released in 1943.

She won two Academy Awards, was married eight times – twice to Burton – and died in 2011 having been one of Hollywood’s most enduring stars.

In ‘The Lost Tapes,’ Taylor describes how uncomfortable she was with becoming famous at such a young age.

By the age of 16 she was playing 24-year-old women on screen even though inside she was just a ‘terrified’ young girl.

At 18 she met Nicky Hilton, a socialite and heir to the Hilton Hotels fortune.

He was 23 and they got married even though Taylor was ‘a virgin, mentally and physically….I was not prepared to be an adult,’ she says.

‘I was in love with being in love…infatuated with love,’ Taylor says. As a result she made what she calls ‘horrendous mistakes.’

With Hilton they included ‘his kicking me in the stomach and causing me to have a miscarriage,’ an episode Taylor recounts with little emotion.

Taylor says: ‘The wedding was lovely. Then came disillusionment. Also a few split lips.’

‘Nick was always in a tantrum. I couldn’t go back to that life of such mental and physical abuse and our marriage was over and done with.’

As a 19-year-old divorcee, Taylor enjoyed the first independent time of her life and she had a ball while staying at the Plaza Hotel in New York with Roddy McDowall, her co-star on Lassie who became a lifelong friend.

McDowall was gay and Taylor enjoyed his company and that of other gay men – including later Rock Hudson – because she knew they wouldn’t try to come on to her.

Husband no.2 was actor Michael Wilding who Taylor calls the ‘great stabilizer’ as he was 20 years older than her.

Wilding represented ‘tranquility, security and maturity,’ which were all the things Taylor was looking for in her own life.

Taylor was ‘dying’ to have children and wanted to be a ‘good wife and a splendid mother,’ so she had two children with Wilding, Michael Wilding Jr. and Christoper Wilding, the first of her four kids.

Taylor admits that three of the five years she was married to Wilding were not working because she ‘sort of hen-pecked’ and ‘dominated him’.

Taylor had hoped that Wilding would be the stronger of the pair but he wasn’t.

‘I need somebody to dominate me,’ Taylor candidly admits.

Taylor’s third marriage was to a man who her friends called the ‘love of her life.’

She met Mike Todd while he was producing his first film, Around the World in 80 Days, which became a smash hit and won him an Oscar.

Taylor wasn’t overly attracted to the flamboyant Todd, but admired how he was a ‘real con artist who could con the gold out of your teeth,’ as she puts it.

The day after Taylor broke up with Wilding, Todd demanded to see her in an office at MGM and gave her a speech saying he loved her and there was ‘no question’ they should be together.

Remarkably Taylor went along with it and they wed, touring the world to promote his movie.

Their connection came through their mutual curiosity and because Todd, a self educated man, didn’t make Taylor feel inadequate as she did in Hollywood due to her lack of formal training as an actress.

In the film Taylor says that she would deliberately make Todd mad by doing things like turning up late.

When he lost his temper and ‘dominated’ her, she would ‘purr inside because he had won,’ she says in the film, adding that she needs strength in a man.

‘I need that quality in a man more than any other quality because I know myself and I know I will try and get away with murder.’

But happiness would last little more than a year and Todd died in a plane crash in 1958 while traveling from New Mexico to New York.

Taylor could have been on the plane were it not for her having a cold.

While in mourning, Taylor grew close to Eddie Fisher, an actor who was best friends with Todd and was married to Debbie Reynolds, herself an actress.

In the film Reynolds says that she and Fisher went to Taylor’s house soon after Todd’s death and found her so distraught she was ‘screaming.’

Reynolds took her children home and told Fisher to stay.

According to Reynolds, Fisher was a ‘great comfort’ to Taylor and accompanied her on a trip to New York, claiming he had to be there for work.

‘He really went to be with Elizabeth which I found out and realized there was something serious going on there,’ Reynolds says.

After Taylor was seen out with Fisher, the ‘s*** hit the fan,’ Taylor admits.

She says: ‘I was keeping Mike alive by talking about him because Eddie was a great friend of Mike’s. The only thing we had in common was Mike.

‘I never loved Eddie. I liked him. I felt sorry for him. And I liked talking (to him). But he was not Mike.’

They married in 1959, scandalously just three hours after Fisher divorced Reynolds.

In a brutal put-down, Taylor says: ‘I don’t remember too much about my marriage to him (Fisher), except it was one big, friggin’ awful mistake. I knew it before we were married and didn’t know how to get out of it.’

She also takes aim at Reynolds and says: ‘I can’t say anything against Debbie, but she put on such an act, with the pigtails and the diaper pins with the whole thing coming as a big shock.

‘The public didn’t know any of the personal unhappiness between Debbie and Eddie that I knew about. As far as they were concerned I had broken up a perfectly happy marriage.’

Taylor soon became depressed due to Fisher’s controlling ways.

She claims in the film that he ‘made sure I felt lonely’ and they never went out as he didn’t like her to be with other people.

‘I was so desperate at one time I did take some sleeping pills,’ Taylor says.

‘I did it deliberately, calmly. I was fed up with living. I couldn’t face the thought of divorce. I’d rather have been dead.’

A doctor came to see Taylor and she recovered, leaving her ‘deeply ashamed’ because she was being so selfish and not thinking of her children.

The first time she met Richard Burton was on the set of the epic film Cleopatra where he played Mark Anthony to her Cleopatra.

Burton having the worst hangover Taylor had ever seen in a man did not put her off.

For his part, Burton wasn’t deterred by Taylor burping during their first encounter.

In the film Burton says he was enthralled by Taylor and says she is ‘queen-like, distant…it’s the inaccessibility of Elizabeth that makes her so exciting.’

Taylor admits that she and Burton tried to keep themselves apart but they couldn’t stop falling in love with each other.

At the time Burton was married to actress Sybil Williams, with whom he had two children, and the ensuing scandal coincided with the release of Cleopatra in 1963 and was unlike anything the world had seen.

The Vatican issued a statement condemning Taylor and saying that her children should be taken away.

‘It made me want to vomit,’ Taylor says, adding that the Italian FBI had to investigate after she got threats to blow her up with a bomb.

Taylor began to leave Fisher but then got back together with him, only for Fisher to become even more abusive.

In the film, Taylor says: ‘Eddie at night time would sit up – and he had a gun.

‘Every time I nearly nodded off he would stroke my arm and say: “I’m not going to kill you, I wouldn’t shoot you. You are much too pretty.” All night long. Eventually, I ran from the house, I was so scared.’

Taylor calls the situation ‘desperate’ for everyone involved.

‘My father called me a whore,’ she says, adding that she felt guilty about Burton’s children for ‘having inflicted such awful pain’ on them.

She says: ‘Do I think I’m going to be punished in hell? I don’t think we can plan for being rewarded afterwards. We must pay on this earth, we must do our penance now.’

For Taylor, that meant using her fame to start amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, and raising awareness of HIV and AIDS.

She says in the film that this was a way of using her fame for good, even though she was never comfortable with being a celebrity herself.

Reflecting on her public image, Taylor says that she was considered to be an ‘untrustworthy lady, completely superficial – and too pretty.’

She says: ‘Maybe because of my personal life I suggest something illicit, but I am not illicit, and I am not immoral. I make mistakes, and I have paid for them.

‘I know that I will never be able to pay the bill, but that is not something you can put in the story.’