Elizabeth Taylor was an actress.
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor , DBE ( February 27 , 1932 -- March 23 , 2011 ) was a British American actress , businesswoman , and humanitarian . She began as a child actress in the early 1940s , and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s . In 1999 , the American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend . She made the transition to adult roles in the early 1950s , when she starred in the comedy Father of the Bride ( 1950 ) and received critical acclaim for her performance in the tragic drama A Place in the Sun ( 1951 ) . She began receiving better roles in the mid-1950s , beginning with the epic drama Giant ( 1956 ) , and starred in several critically and commercially successful films in the following years .