Francesca Annis, who appeared in the epic Hollywood film ‘Cleopatra’ alongside Elizabeth Taylor, recalls the beauty, kindness and immortal star quality of its leading lady Fame and stardom sat very easily on Elizabeth Taylor’s shoulders. She went from being a Hollywood princess in National Velvet to being its queen, but she always knew the external trappings of stardom weren’t all that her life was about. They were just what her job was about. It was a crucial distinction. I always think of her as the superstar who also managed to have a home life – and I don’t just mean her marriages.Read moreI was 16 when I went to Rome to film alongside her in Cleopatra. I played Eiras, her handmaiden, and was with Elizabeth for 12 months. Before that, I’d only been in one Saturday-morning children’s film, which was shot in my school holidays, so it was an entirely new experience for me. It was 1961, and she was at the height of her fame – the role earned her $1 million – but still she took me under her wing.
I wouldn’t say I was an innocent, but I certainly didn’t realise the enormity of the film I’d got involved in. I’d got the role more by chance than design. I was training to be a ballet dancer, and my teacher had told me to call off the casting. So I went early, just to say I couldn’t make my appointment, but ended up meeting the director, Joseph Mankiewicz, who was leaving for Italy. It was fate.
Many people describe how, when meeting Elizabeth Taylor for the first time, they expected her to be special, given all they had heard about her and seen of her – but that still she took their breath away. And when I met her on the set in Rome, that is how it was for me.
It was partly how she looked. I remember her eyes so clearly. They really were violet, and she had these very dark eyelashes. But she was a completely natural beauty: extremely glamorous on the red carpet, but it was no great shock to see her without her make-up.
My part involved an awful lot of standing around with her on the set, and I spent a lot of time just gazing at her, thinking: "Gosh, this woman is so beautiful." She had the most amazing mouth, soft and full, and beautiful skin. She was also very sensual and well covered – not obese, not fat, but with something to get hold of. Her shoulders were spherical and her figure was hourglass. I know our concept of the ideal figure has changed, but I still think her shape the most desirable.
But it wasn’t only her looks that struck me at that first meeting. There was something about her as a person. Yes, she was a star, and confident in her position. But that, combined with her beauty, could have made her glacial and intimidating. She wasn’t. She was very warm and very natural. Above all, she was true to herself.
It was a very important lesson she taught me, and one that has held me in pretty good stead throughout my career. She knew that, for people in her position, there are two distinct worlds. There’s your private family life and then there are all the paparazzi outside, who will create another you – and probably a dozen other yous. And she understood the difference.
Very quickly we seemed to… well, hit it off is the wrong phrase, but she made it effortless. Early on, we went on location to Ischia in the Gulf of Naples, and she asked the production team where I would be staying. I assumed I’d be with the rest of the crew at one end of the island, whereas she was going to be in a five-star hotel at the other end. And she said: "There is absolutely no question of Francesca staying down with the unit. She’s too young. She must come up and be with me and the family."
That was typical of her. And so I stayed with her and her children, who she was careful to protect from the limelight. I’d be there when she was playing naturally with them in the swimming pool. I wonder now if her concern for me had something in common with the care she showed many times afterwards for those who had been – like her – child stars. I wasn’t one, of course, but I was still young and she was very protective.
That concern wasn’t an egotistical thing. She didn’t make a great fuss about it or want others to see her doing it. It was just an example she set, and others on the set took their lead from her. And it wasn’t only for me. During filming, I remember one of the make-up ladies’ children fell ill. Elizabeth quietly paid for all the medical expenses. That was certainly never publicised, but it was part of a quality that her fans recognised in her.
When people ask me how it was that she so captured our imagination over so many decades, the answer is because she managed to lead such a well-rounded life. Obviously, she had her phenomenal looks and figure, and her exceptional talent as an actor, but she also had a great passion for living. And she was a good person, and had courage – giving Aids a public profile, for example, long before others dared. The public has instincts about stars. They have antennae. They know when someone is histrionic or when the causes they support are all an affectation. And they knew Elizabeth Taylor was genuine.
It was during the filming of Cleopatra that her story with Richard Burton began. I remember him mainly on set as a macho, rugby-playing Welsh male. We all knew something was happening between them. We could see. It was passionate. There were times when she wouldn’t come out of her dressing room because there had been a disagreement between them, and she didn’t want to have a boiling match in front of the rest of us.
It had a normal perspective on set. It was only when I got back to London that people started bombarding me with questions about Elizabeth and Richard, and I realised the outside world had a voracious appetite for details about their love affair.
It was rather like Oscars night. The limousines pull up at the red carpet, and everyone is dressed up. But the glamour and the mystery have all been created with the actors’ collusion. Once they reach the end of the red carpet and go through the doors, it is business as usual, because everyone knows each other and it’s a perfectly normal atmosphere. There is how it is on the inside, as opposed to how it appears from the outside. And that is how it was with their love affair. On the set, it seemed very different from the scandal it became in the press.
Elizabeth’s health was always delicate. During the filming of Cleopatra, she had problems with her back. On one particularly hot day at the height of the Italian summer, her doctors said that she was to have only bottled water. I don’t think I’d even heard of bottled water before that. So as not to be treated differently, Elizabeth said that she wouldn’t have it unless there was bottled water for everyone – the sparks, the stuntmen, the sound people.
The Island
