Rehab, medical malpractice, and a heartbreaking confrontation
with her son. Even Hollywood's brightest star had a dark side.
A 2022 authorized biography of Elizabeth Taylor has offered new
details about the substance use issues faced by the classic Hollywood actress,
especially late in life. The book, Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour of an Icon,
was written by Kate Andersen Brower and features recollections from Taylor's second son,
Christopher Wilding. During her life, Taylor was one of the most recognizable
actors in Hollywood, with a heyday lasting throughout the 1950s and '60s.
"You will kneel."
"I will what?"
"On your knees."
Taylor's history of substance abuse wasn't exactly a secret prior to the release of Brower's
book — but we now have more personal insights into the difficulties she faced in her later years.
The true extent of Taylor's problems became public knowledge in 1990, when three of her doctors were
accused of gross negligence for overprescribing the star with potentially fatal doses of
narcotics. This had taken place from around 1981 through to 1990. The doctors were charged with
giving the actress 1,000 prescriptions for 28 controlled substances, including pain relief,
sleeping aids, and tranquilizers. Long before that, in 1983, Taylor admitted she was addicted
to sleeping pills and painkillers and claimed it had been going on for more than three decades.
After a bout with the Asiatic flu in the early 1960s, Taylor had been admitted to the hospital
with staphylococcus pneumonia, likely worsened by her consumption of alcohol and Seconal,
a prescription sleep aid. She had struggled with alcohol use from at least the time of
her first marriage to actor Richard Burton, who also had highly publicized alcohol use issues.
Three of Taylor's doctors received reprimands for their role in facilitating
her addiction. At the time, Deputy Attorney General Earl Plowman said:
″It was a classic case of abuse involving multiple prescriptions,
multiple controlled substances at different pharmacies at the same time."
Inevitably, some of the most startling revelations covered in Brower's book
come from this time period. In those years, concern from those closest to Taylor grew so
severe that Taylor's then-daughter-in-law, Aileen Getty, sought help from a healthcare
regulatory agency. It was Getty's report that launched the investigation into the Taylor's
doctors. As it turned out, the degree to which Taylor was overprescribed at that time was
such that an independent medical expert assumed she was dead. Based on her medical records, the
dosage of prescription medication she had taken was, in their words, "incompatible with life."
In Brower's biography of Taylor, the actress's second son, Christopher Wilding,
also provides a firsthand account of how serious her addiction issues became later in her life.
In that section of the book, Wilding recalls a moment when, during a period of time when he was
living with his mother in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she summoned him into her bedroom. There,
Wilding found his mother with a syringe of Demerol, a highly-addictive opioid painkiller,
in her hand. When Wilding refused to give his mother the shot, her son recalled:
"She looked at me with deadened yet disappointed eyes, took a breath,
steadied her hand, and plunged the needle into her flesh."
By 1981, Taylor's addiction issues had reached a crisis point, as the star surrounded herself with
people who enabled her and the doctors who could supply her with prescription medication. In 1983,
Taylor entered a Betty Ford Center, where she stopped drinking but still maintained consuming
pills, rationalizing the habit as necessary prescription medication. Taylor's second stint
in rehab ended in 1988 when she was asked to leave the center. Taylor's third husband later recalled:
"Elizabeth's problems in 1960 were basically the same as they were in
1990. She had become addicted to every pill on the market."
Taylor died in 2011 from congestive heart failure. She was 79 years old.