“My very first memory is of pain.” More than a touch dramatic, the words could easily be lifted from the script of Boom! Instead, they are a real-life confession by its leading lady, Elizabeth Taylor.
When it comes to pain, Taylor is the poster child-star. In her long life, the actor underwent more than 30 surgeries and was supposedly hospitalised on more than 100 occasions. After a bout of pneumonia almost took her out in 1961, it was the pain of nearly losing her that led to her best actress sympathy win at the Oscars. And she would win again in 1967 – this time on her own merits, as the banshee wife in the vociferous Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
