Elizabeth Taylor didn't just get married. She lived a life where romance was the primary currency, a high-stakes game that played out across eight weddings and seven different men. To most people, the phrase Elizabeth Taylor on marriage evokes a punchline about a serial bride or a woman who couldn't be alone. But if you actually look at the history, it’s way more complicated than a simple collection of white dresses and expensive diamonds. She wasn't just collecting husbands like charms on a bracelet; she was searching for a very specific, almost Victorian kind of stability in the middle of a chaotic Hollywood existence.
She once famously said that she was "a very committed wife" and that she "should be, because I’ve had so much practice." It’s a great line. Very self-aware. But it also hides the fact that Taylor was deeply old-fashioned. She didn't believe in casual flings. If she fell in love, she got married. That was the rule. In her mind, marriage wasn't the end of a romance; it was the only honorable way to conduct one.
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The Eight Weddings and the Search for "The One"
People forget how young she was when it started. Conrad "Nicky" Hilton Jr. was the first. She was 18. It was 1950. The studio, MGM, basically treated the wedding like a movie premiere for Father of the Bride. It was a disaster from the jump. Hilton was abusive and struggled with addiction, and the marriage lasted barely nine months. Imagine being 19 years old, already a divorcee in the 1950s, with the entire world watching you fail. It set a precedent for her: when things got bad, she didn't just linger in misery. She left.
Then came Michael Wilding. He was 20 years older than her. He provided a sort of calm, a "safe harbor" after the Hilton wreckage. They had two sons. But safe harbors can get boring when you’re one of the biggest stars on the planet. By 1957, that was over, and enters Mike Todd.
Todd was the lightning strike. He was a brash, loud, larger-than-life producer who matched her energy. This is where the narrative of Elizabeth Taylor on marriage shifts from "young girl searching" to "woman finding her equal." Todd was likely the love of her life—or at least the first one. When his plane, the "Lucky Liz," crashed in 1958, it broke her. Truly. She was a widow at 26.
What followed was the Eddie Fisher scandal. It’s the kind of stuff that would break the internet today. Fisher was the best friend of Mike Todd and the husband of "America's Sweetheart" Debbie Reynolds. Taylor was grieving, Fisher was "comforting" her, and soon they were at the altar. It was messy. It was a PR nightmare. But Taylor didn't care about the optics; she cared about the companionship.
The Richard Burton Years: A Marriage So Big It Needed Two Tries
You can't talk about Elizabeth Taylor's view on matrimony without the "Le Scandale" on the set of Cleopatra. Richard Burton was a Shakespearean powerhouse with a voice like "melted butter poured over flint." They were both married to other people. They didn't care.
Their first marriage lasted from 1964 to 1974. It was fueled by booze, diamonds, and a level of passion that most people only read about in bad novels. They lived on yachts. They bought the Krupp Diamond. They fought in public.
Why did they marry twice?
Because they couldn't live together, but they couldn't stay apart. After a 1974 divorce, they remarried in Botswana in 1975. It lasted less than a year the second time. It's the ultimate example of her philosophy: marriage was the only container strong enough to hold that kind of volatility. She didn't want a "partner." She wanted a husband. She wanted the legal, spiritual, and social weight of the institution to validate the intensity of her feelings.
Beyond the Glamour: The Senator and the Construction Worker
After the fire of Burton, she pivoted. Hard. John Warner, a Republican politician from Virginia, became husband number seven. This was a different version of Elizabeth. She was the "Senator's Wife." She stayed at the farm. She got bored. She gained weight. She struggled with loneliness while he was away on the campaign trail. This period is often overlooked, but it's crucial to understanding her. She tried to fit the mold of a traditional, supportive spouse in a way that erased her own identity. It didn't work.
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Then came the Betty Ford Center. And then came Larry Fortensky.
If you want to know what Elizabeth Taylor on marriage really looked like toward the end, look at Fortensky. He was a construction worker. They met in rehab. The media mocked them. They called it a "beauty and the beast" situation. But for Taylor, it was a return to a sort of grounded reality. They married at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in 1991. Even though they divorced five years later, they remained friends until she died.
What People Miss About Her "Serial" Marrying
It’s easy to be cynical. It’s easy to say she was just impulsive. But look at the era.
- Public Morality: In the 40s and 50s, stars were expected to be moral leaders. You didn't live with a guy; you married him.
- The Studio System: MGM controlled her life. Marriage was often a way to gain some semblance of autonomy, even if it backfired.
- Honesty: Taylor was remarkably honest. She didn't hide her affairs; she legalized them.
She wasn't a "man-eater." She was a romantic who refused to accept anything less than total devotion. When the devotion faded, she didn't try to "fix" it through years of therapy and resentment. She moved on. In a weird way, she had a healthier boundary with happiness than most people who stay in miserable marriages for forty years just for the sake of the anniversary clock.
The Practical Wisdom of a Woman Who Lived It
If you’re looking at Taylor’s history for some kind of life lesson, it’s not "get married eight times." It’s more about the refusal to settle for a mediocre life. She was an optimist. Every time she walked down that aisle, she genuinely believed this was the one that would stick.
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She also knew how to be a friend. Her relationship with her exes—with the exception of Hilton—was surprisingly decent. She and Debbie Reynolds eventually reconciled on a cruise ship, bonded by the fact that they’d both been "victims" of the same man's wandering eye.
The Real Legacy
Ultimately, her marriages were a reflection of her vitality. She lived out loud. She wore the ring, she took the name, and she gave it everything she had until there was nothing left.
If you're navigating your own relationships and feeling the pressure to "get it right" the first time, maybe take a page from the Taylor playbook. Not the divorce part, but the part where you don't let the world's judgment dictate how you pursue your own version of love. She was a woman who owned her choices, whether they were brilliant or disastrous.
Actionable Insights for the Modern Romantic
If we look at the history of Elizabeth Taylor through a modern lens, there are a few things we can actually apply to our own lives:
- Don't ignore red flags for the sake of "tradition": Taylor’s first marriage to Hilton was a warning. If it’s toxic at the start, a wedding license won't fix it.
- Value companionship over optics: Her later marriages, especially with Fortensky, showed she cared less about status and more about who was actually standing next to her in the hard moments.
- Forgiveness is a superpower: Her ability to reconcile with "rivals" like Debbie Reynolds shows that holding onto bitterness is a waste of time.
- Reinvent yourself: Taylor was a child star, a siren, a widow, a pariah, a senator's wife, and an activist. Each marriage was a different chapter of her life, but none of them defined her entire book.
If you're interested in the deeper history of Hollywood's Golden Age, your next step should be to look into the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. It was the work she did after her final marriage that truly solidified her legacy, proving that while she loved men, her greatest love was actually humanity. Take ten minutes today to read about how she used her "scandalous" fame to force the Reagan administration to finally acknowledge the AIDS crisis in the 80s. That’s where her real strength lived.