Elizabeth Taylor spent sixteen weeks holding out for $125,000 a week to land the role of ‘Cleopatra‘. She nearly died making the film, fell in love with her co-star along the way, and watched the production turn into the most expensive movie ever made up to that point. But nothing about the whole ordeal hit her as hard as actually sitting down to watch the finished film.
By her own account, published in Life magazine in 1964, Taylor avoided watching ‘Cleopatra‘ for a long time. The British Embassy in London finally backed her into it when she was asked to host the Bolshoi Ballet as her guests at a screening, a social obligation she couldn’t easily get out of. She later said the film had been something close to a low point in her career. Watching it, she said, was worse than making it. Taylor said that afterward she ran back to her room at the Dorchester Hotel and threw up before she even made it to the bathroom.
Why Elizabeth Taylor Felt the Studio Ruined Her Work in ‘Cleopatra’
It would be easy to write that off as a pampered star throwing a fit. Taylor was the highest-paid actress alive at the time, and ‘Cleopatra‘ ended up being the top-grossing film of the year, even though it nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox in the process. Her performance is still seen as one of the standout screen roles of the 1960s. But her reaction wasn’t really about vanity. It was about losing control over something she cared about.
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She felt the studio had stripped out the character work she was proudest of. They trimmed the film down from Joseph Mankiewicz’s original vision into something that leaned more on spectacle than story. Mankiewicz took over as director after the original production, led by Rouben Mamoulian, fell apart under its own weight, worn down by rewrites, recasting, and delays before a single usable scene existed. By the time cameras were finally rolling at full speed in Rome, the film had already eaten up two years and tens of millions of dollars.
Elizabeth Taylor’s Health Scare on ‘Cleopatra’
Taylor’s own health almost ended the production before it really started. A cold she picked up in London turned into a serious fever, and doctors, including one who treated Queen Elizabeth II, were called in after her temperature hit 103 degrees.
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She was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with meningitis. The production shut down for weeks while she recovered, and Lloyd’s of London ended up paying out $2 million to cover her medical bills.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s ‘Cleopatra’ Affair
Then came Rome and Richard Burton. Her affair with her married co-star turned into a full-blown scandal, drawing criticism from the Vatican and nonstop coverage in the tabloids. During one elaborately staged scene, with thousands of extras meant to greet her as Egyptian royalty, the crowd instead started shouting “Liz! Liz!” and blowing her kisses. Author Kate Andersen has said Taylor found the moment so overwhelming that she broke down in tears, describing it as one of the most draining stretches of her life.
By the time the film premiered in June 1963, Taylor and Burton had skipped it entirely. She later said the two of them had simply had enough of the whole thing by that point.
So when she finally sat down and watched Cleopatra play out on a screen in London, what came up wasn’t just a reaction to bad editing. It was two years of illness, tabloid cruelty, public humiliation, and a role she felt had been cut down into something she didn’t recognize, all hitting her at once, in a hotel bathroom, long after the cameras had stopped rolling.
The film made her a legend, but by her own account, it also made her sick.
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