Elizabeth Taylor was the woman who had everything and dared to ask for more. She began working in films at the age of nine, eventually becoming the highest-paid actress in the world and the first ever to earn $1 million, for her performance in the title role of 1963’s Cleopatra. Her megawatt career had begun to dim by the 1980s, but her star power never did: Taylor was one of the first Hollywood figures to publicly support AIDS activism, raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the cause. (And let’s not even talk about her eight marriages!) “I’m Mother Courage, baby,” Taylor once said. “I’ve been through it all.” And then some. It would have been her 90th birthday on February 27.
