Warning: this post contains references to trauma, abuse and neglect
Elizabeth in her iconic role as Cleopatra
Actor Richard Burton once wrote in his diary that he had seen people actually shiver when walking across a room to be introduced to Elizabeth his wife. The fascination with her presence and the aura she gave off far-outlived her youth. Elizabeth “defined twentieth century Hollywood for a global audience, both as an actress and as a cultural figure.”1
Before reading about the life of Elizabeth Taylor, I knew only about her acting achievements. In fact, she made more money with her perfumes than she did making films. And she left a huge legacy in campaigning and research around HIV. Elizabeth made 56 feature films over six decades, including National Velvet (1944), Cleopatra (1963) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf (1967). She won two Oscars and was the first actor to negotiate a $1million contract. With Richard Burton, Elizabeth was half of the most famous celebrity couple of the 20th Century1. She represented excesses, marrying eight times to seven men and amassing the world’s most valuable private jewellery collection. This is the story that I have heard, and it is all true. But I do not think it is complete.
In the second half of her long life, Elizabeth Taylor became close with Michael Jackson, who saw her as a kind of mother figure. Biographer Kate Andersen Brower notes how much they had in common:
“Jackson was abused by his father and Elizabeth felt deep sympathy for him. She knew what it was like to be used by your family for money and fame.”1
The biographer stresses how being pushed into childhood stardom was an experience shared by these two icons – something that had led to adult problems for both – including drug abuse and failed relationships. For a moment as a reader, I think of Elizabeth as coming from an ‘ambitious’ but non-violent home. But the author has missed out or forgotten something. Elizabeth too was severely physically abused by her father. Is it not possible that their shared experience of childhood abuse was a factor in their adult troubles? The author was not trying to hide anything - she had written about Elizabeth’s abuse earlier in the same book. But being beaten up by her father is somehow lost as a possible influence in her adult life.
I think that there is something that makes us want to hide away the traumatic origins of performance and charisma in the stars we celebrate. I’m not sure why, although Elizabeth herself was clearly very uncomfortable about speaking about this herself. The one time she told an interviewer about Francis’s tendency to “bat me around a little”1, she excused his behaviour as being caused only by alcohol. But she confided in a friend that early one morning he had swung her by the hair and punched her so hard, that she developed lock jaw.1 Yes, she had a lot in common with Michael Jackson.
With her older brother Howard, perhaps the only source of support throughout her life.
How to make a child star
I have been using the map of narcissism2 to predict what we will find in the childhood experiences of icons and the strategies they live by. The map names traumatic experiences or roles but also roles or strategies that the child will have to use for escape (see below). In part A, I will look, in the childhood of Elizabeth, for the standout experiences that relate to the map.
The map of narcissism2*
The stage mother
If we were to go back to 1943 and MGM film studios, Los Angeles, and if we were to go to the canteen and sit opposite the young Elizabeth Taylor with our lunch, we would find next to the child actress her mother Sara. According to director George Stevens (A Place in The Sun, Giant) we would find Sara speaking on behalf of her daughter; “Elizabeth says…Elizabeth thinks…” whilst Elizabeth sat in silence. Stevens said he felt like shouting at the woman, “Why don’t you let Elizabeth speak for herself?”1
Sara Sothern was the adopted stage name of Elizabeth’s mother – chosen when she moved from Arkansas to LA to take her acting career to the next level. At the peak of this short career, aged 26, Sara played a disabled girl in The Fool on Broadway. The New York Times said she played the miraculously cured girl well. But surprisingly, after meeting Francis Taylor, Sara suddenly gave up her dream, to marry and start a family. This switch does not obviously make sense, based on Sara’s personality and ambition. The sacrifice is all the more puzzling if the rumours were true that Francis was gay. But one explanation became clearer over time.
Sara’s personality was described in many ways – none of them bland. She had a “magnetic personality…funny, smart and nobody’s pushover…she had a biting sense of humour which, sometimes, people didn’t know how to take.”3 But she was “not the type of woman to spend a lot of time reflecting on things. She would say that she was too busy for self-examination.”3 The Hollywood community would later describe her “stellar” ability to manipulate even senior studio executives.3
Sara would later tell Elizabeth, “I gave up my career when I married daddy”1. This is true, except that it was often later hard to separate what was her daughter’s career from her own. It seems that Sara switched to seeing her own career (life even) as a prototype – a kind of dress rehearsal. She now had the opportunity and power to start again at birth; to mould and create, in Elizabeth a true archetype. She succeeded, and never missed an opportunity to take the credit. I wonder if elements of Elizabeth’s path to stardom included guilt for halting her mother’s career, and a sense that her beauty was, in some way, her mother’s own handywork (Sara would also touch up the beauty spot with an eye pencil).
The passive and aggressive father
Whilst Sara may have been attracted by Francis’s looks, she was also attracted by his vulnerability and weaknesses. Sara, a devout Christian scientist, believed in miraculous healing, but she was also someone who liked to identify others as a project she could develop through criticism and coaching (there is no mention of empathy). And according to biographers, Francis was a project. He lacked confidence and “didn’t finish his sentences with strength”3. Sara was free to say things like:
“We can all change, darling, and for you, that will prove to be a godsend.”3
Francis was rarely allowed to spend time with Elizabeth. His contributions, apparently, were his bone structure and a pair of distinctive blue eyes. The external was everything. Sara hadn’t wanted children, she had wanted a beautiful daughter. After Sara’s death, Elizabeth’s lawyer, clearing her home, remarked on one thing: “you would have no idea that she ever had a son”1
Prior to the birth of Elizabeth, we can see in the powerful figure of Sara strategies of performing, but with Francis, we can also see in her a strategy of finding vulnerability in others. Both can function to create distance from vulnerability or shame in oneself.
The making of the child star: preparation
Theories of narcissism often point to admiration and idealisation by a parent as a specific condition, in nurturing narcissism. This does not include praise and recognition of genuine qualities and achievements. This kind of admiration does not recognise the child’s individuality, and actual strengths. In this way, it ignores the child’s actual self and becomes a kind of neglect. But does Elizabeth fit this theory? She had unusual lavender eyes that people found mesmerising. She had a double row of eye lashes – a condition called distichiasis. Was Sara not just encouraging her daughter to exploit her natural strengths?
Sara, having had a beautiful son, prayed earnestly for a beautiful girl. It had worked the first time. At the birth of Elizabeth, she was incredibly anxious to see her baby. As the nurse wrapped her new-born, Sara asked:
“Is she perfect?”
“Yes, perfect”
“Beautiful?”
“Yes, Beautiful”
“Does she have hair? Is it light or dark?”
“Lots of hair. Dark hair” 1
In retrospect, this conversation spoke loudly of Sara’s relationship with her daughter. When the nurse brought Elizabeth over in a cashmere shawl, what was Sara’s reaction? She was horrified. There was evidently more work to do: her eyes were firmly shut, and she had black hair on her back and arms.
“Sara, who was more than a little superficial, prayed that her daughter’s appearance would improve…”3
The story of Elizabeth’s childhood from this moment, is one of her being systematically moulded into a film star, by a mother who had herself wanted to be one. On top of this, the ambition was often attributed to the child. Sara loved having dinner parties. When guests saw photos of Elizabeth on the fridge next to photos of actress Vivien Leigh, and dutifully commented that Elizabeth had similar looks, Sara would say “do you really think so?”1 and add that Elizabeth had put the pictures up. Sara once said,
“It’s funny how this moving picture thing keeps presenting itself. Perhaps its meant to be; perhaps we haven’t the right to stand in the way of her future.”1
Hedda Hopper, a 50-year-old high-status Hollywood gossip columnist, was persuaded to meet the eight-year-old Elizabeth, during which she sang Blue Danube as a demonstration of her talent. Hopper said afterwards,
“The girl was clearly terrified, but I felt that the mother was never going to rest until the child was famous…she wanted to have a glamourous life through her child.”3
Sara lied that Elizabeth had taken dance lessons with the British Royal Princesses at the Vacani Dance School in London (the royals had been taught at home). In LA, Sara enrolled Elizabeth into a music class attended by grandchildren of the MGM films chief. She worked her way to having the chairman of Universal Films round for tea. It was the child, of course, who was left alone with the intimidating Cheever Cowdin to entertain him; putting aside her nine-year old feelings, to appease the wishes of her mother.
The script from The Fool would be brought out by Sara, and Elizabeth would practice the part her mother had played late into the evenings, over and over. Biographer Taraborrelli points out the irony:
“Finally, Elizabeth began to cry on cue for the scene in which such emotion was required. Sara was well-pleased.”3
An early press shot
The making of the child star: shaping
Elizabeth’s first love, from the age of three, was horse-riding. But her earliest memories of being on stage sound similar to her cherished experiences of horse riding: “It was a marvellous feeling on that stage – the isolation, the hugeness, the feeling of space, and no end to space, the lights, the music – and then the applause bringing you back into focus.”1 This sounds like an experience of escape or relief. Biographer Andersen-Brower sums up this escape strategy in a different way for Elizabeth: as a child she was,
“often scared…but she discovered that onstage she could take on the persona of someone else and free herself from her anxiety.”1
On the map of narcissism, the child finds performance and admiration as a way to find distance from vulnerable feelings attached to experiences of emotional neglect, criticism or condemnation (see map).
At 12, Elizabeth became a huge star in National Velvet, a film itself about an ambitious girl fighting for a place in a male dominated world of horse racing. During the filming of a scene, there is a call from behind the camera: the way that Elizabeth is holding something makes her hand look fat. The scene has to be reshot differently. We hear a lot about the impact of film making on young actors. Elizabeth’s granddaughter will later describe how this scrutiny and criticism caused her to harden and lose emotional sensitivity. But the voice behind the camera was Elizabeth’s mother, and this voice had been in her life from birth. The studio would repeat these messages, but for how many performers, does this voice start at home, preparing the child intentionally or otherwise, for the world of performance? Taraborrelli describes Elizabeth’s fear, on set, of her mother’s disappointment:
“On seeing that Sara was upset with something that had occurred, Elizabeth would drop her eyes and become flustered and anxious. Eventually of course, she would rise to the occasion and do whatever it was that she was supposed to do…but at what cost to her psyche?”3
At this point in her life, how was Elizabeth getting along with the normal developmental task of getting to know her mind and learning to notice how she really feels from one moment to the next? These skills are now understood to underly mood regulation and the ability to sustain intimate relationships. Instead of developing in these areas, this little girl had a mother who had taken over her mind. Elizabeth was permitted to wish and feel what her mother wished and felt, or otherwise, to put her feelings away. The YouTube montage of Taylor films shows a 12-year-old falling from a huge horse ‘King Charles’ as it jumps over a pond in National Velvet. There was no stunt double. And the pain from the back injury she sustained would persist for Elizabeth’s entire life. Watch the scene. The 12-year old’s face had long before learned to betray no feeling that was not in the script.
Gossip Columnist Lowella Parsons met Elizabeth at that time, and was struck by something:
“A very unusual girl…she is reserved and unemotional…her face was completely devoid of expression while we were talking. She is an actress I thought. She can conceal her real thoughts better than most grown-ups.”1
Perhaps she was observing, on the map of narcissism, a strategy already established in Elizabeth: of dismissing and subduing her own feelings and vulnerability. The columnist seems to connect this with Elizabeth’s acting talent. Whilst the tendency in narcissism to dismiss the feelings of others is more spoken about, the dismissing of one’s own feelings is equally fundamental.4
During the filming of ‘A Date With Judy’, Elizabeth finally broke down and said to her parents that she wanted to stop making movies and live like an ordinary child. Sara “took her daughters cry for help as a sign of ingratitude and reprimanded her”.1 Francis agreed with Elizabeth, but he remained silent. This brings me back to the idea of Saras ‘sacrifice’ in starting a family – and a strategy of shaming her daughter into compliance.
National Velvet costume test
The making of a child star: maturing
In time, the grooming by Elizabeth’s mother was replaced by grooming by others. At 16, the director of The Conspirator found Elizabeth too innocent on camera kissing her co-star Robert Taylor. The solution was to send her for a photo shoot with Philippe Halsmann, who coached the teenager: “You have bossoms, so stick them out!”1 She didn’t like her co-star’s “tongue down my throat”. On set, MGM had a practice of giving uppers and downers to their child actors to help them sleep or perform. Again, the actual feelings or needs of the child, rather than being respected, had to be subdued or enhanced. Substance use – another strategy associated with narcissism, was introduced.
I suspect that by the time she was an adult, Elizabeth had a real difficulty with knowing her own mind – particularly her feelings and desires. But this was not necessarily a problem she was aware of. She said about her personality, “that single-mindedness, or stubbornness if you will, is as much part of me as the colour of my eyes”.3 But I suspect there was a time when she had the eyes but was still just a vulnerable girl without this need for control and a forceful mind. I wonder if this is part of what makes an engaging, powerful and even charismatic personality – a need to carry more force than would have been necessary with a different childhood experience. In other words, do charismatic imposing people become so as a defence - against being imposed upon or denied a mind of their own? Not all features of narcissism are obviously connected with celebrity, but this one is.
With a poor sense in Elizabeth of who she really was, Biographer Taraborrelli describes performance, not just as a career, but as a strategy for living:
“The constant nagging at her to act and be a certain way... She began to feel, as she got older, that it was all acting: photography, public appearances, accepting awards…her life…and not just the part where she was making movies, either. She learned to play at being Elizabeth Taylor, and it was a full-time job”3
In part B, I will look at the adult Elizabeth and her many strategies for avoiding vulnerability – only one of which was being a megastar.
Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own unless otherwise stated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any institution I have been employed by. The content here is for information and should not be interpreted as advice.
*Ryle did not apply this approach only to narcissism. If this mapping approach has been used in your own therapy, this does not mean that you have narcissistic difficulties.
Notes
1. Andersen Brower, K. (2022). Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon. Harper Collins.
2. Ryle, A. & Kerr, I.B. (2002). Introducing Cognitive Analytic Therapy. Wiley.
3. Taraborrelli, J.R. (2006). Elizabeth. Pan.
4. Lowen, A. (1997). Narcissism. Denial of the True Self. Touchstone.