but even when people made fun, she preserved a hint of the divine aura of her youth.

When cartoonist Garry Trudeau mocked Taylor and then-husband John Warner, newly installed as a U.S. senator, in a 1979 "Doonesbury" comic strip, he memorably described her as a "tad overweight, but with violet eyes to die for."

Her eyes were only part of the charms that took her to the top in Hollywood and kept her there for decades.

Born in London on Feb. 27, 1932, to art dealer Francis Taylor and American stage actress Sara Sothern, Taylor seemed born for the spotlight. A seasoned ballerina at age 3, Taylor danced before Princess Elizabeth, the future queen.

Her family moved to Hollywood at the outset of World War II. She then made her screen debutwith a tiny part in the 1942 comedy "There's One Born Every Minute." Her big break came a year later in "Lassie Come Home."

Taylor's screen test for the film won her both the part and a long-term contract. She grew up quickly after that.

"I have the emotions of a child in the body of a woman," she once said. "I was rushed into womanhood for the movies. It caused me long moments of unhappiness and doubt."

Steady work and high-profile romances followed into her late teens, with early lovers including athletes Ralph Kiner and Glenn Davis and hotel heir Conrad Hilton Jr., whom she married at age 18 and divorced just months later.

Taylor showed her first real grown-up glimmers as an actress with 1951's "A Place in the Sun,"