Elizabeth Taylor Revealed She Had Regrets About Eddie Fisher Marriage in Upcoming Documentary
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Just when you think you’ve heard every angle of Elizabeth Taylor’s life, a new HBO documentary comes along to add an additional spin to her story. Newly resurfaced tapes from an interview Elizabeth Taylor did with Richard Meryman for his 1965 book, Elizabeth Taylor by Elizabeth Taylor, are a rich part of retelling her life story in the HBO Documentary, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes.
The film, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday night, is the opportunity to hear Taylor relive her storied career and tumultuous romances in her own voice. Her tabloid love triangle with Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher — a precursor to the Jennifer Aniston-Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie era — offered surprising new information about how she felt about the crooner, who comforted her in the wake of husband Mike Todd’s death in a 1958 plane crash.
Taylor admits in the film, per the Daily Mail, that she “never loved” Fisher and that their five-year marriage was “one big awful frigging mistake.” The marriage lasted from 1959 until 1964, and she unpacked what happened between them as their affair began while Fisher was married to Reynolds. It was a huge scandal at the time, and it was anything but a fairytale ending with allegations of abuse. “Eddie was a great friend of Mike’s. That was the only thing we had in common. I never loved Eddie. I felt sorry for him. And I liked talking to him about Mike,” Taylor said in the documentary. “I don’t remember much about the marriage apart from that it was one big awful frigging mistake — and I knew that before I got married. But I didn’t know how to get out of it.”
Her marriage to Fisher fell apart while Taylor filmed Cleopatra with Richard Burton. Even though she tried to patch things up with Fisher, the situation at home became dangerous for her. “Eddie at nighttime would sit up — and he had a gun,” she alleged. “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.”
Author Kate Andersen Brower, author of Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon, told SheKnows that Taylor “carried a lot of guilt within her about breaking up a marriage,” but she took the burden of the blame in the media. “But nobody breaks up a marriage, you know? [The men] are as culpable as she was for what happened there,” she explained. “I always feel like it’s the women that get pitted against each other. It was Elizabeth versus Debbie, but no one’s really holding the men accountable at all.” The HBO documentary won’t debut until Aug. 3, but it’s bound to give a new perspective on her many loves who weren’t always the greatest match for the Hollywood icon.
Before you go, click here to see every man Elizabeth Taylor dated or married below: