Does she, doesn't she? If she is to be believed, she doesn't. Actress Elizabeth Taylor, who is more famous for her multiple marriages than for her acting talents, has laughed off rumors that she is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, a condition where the brain cells waste away.
“Oh come on, do I look like I'm dying? Do I look like or sound like I have Alzheimer's?” she asked host Larry King on his popular show, referring to a
National Enquirer report that quoted an anonymous friend as saying that the actress was under treatment for Alzheimer's. “Do you think any friends of mine would say things like that?” she said.
Asked about her use of a wheelchair, the 74-year-old Oscar winner clarified that it had more to do with back problems and osteoporosis than with Alzheimer's. “(The reason is) my back, which has been chronically bad since I was a teenager,” Taylor said, adding that the paparazzi wrote these kind of stories “because they have nothing else dirty to write about anybody else”.
“I think they're trying to sell magazines. Some audience out there ... they like scandal. They like filth. And if they want to hear that I'm dead, sorry folks. I'm not. And I don't plan on it,” she added. The actress said she was busy with her AIDS activism and jewelry designing, which she described as one of her 'passions'.
When the conversation turned to tainted King of Pop Michael Jackson, who is Taylor's good friend, the actress said she felt extreme anger at his detractors. “I've never been so angry in my life. I've been there, when his nephews were there, and we all were in the bed watching television. There was nothing abnormal about it. There was no touchy-feely thing going on. We laughed like children and we watched a lot of Walt Disney. There was nothing odd about it,” she said in defense of the
Dangerous singer who was acquitted of child molestation charges last year. She likened her childhood to Jackson's because both were 'horrible'.
Taylor, who made her showbiz debut with
National Velvet at the age of 12 years, was last seen in
These Old Broads, a TV film released in 2001. Considered one of the most beautiful women of all times, Taylor was married eight times. The violet-eyed actress won two Academy Awards, one in 1961 for
Butterfield 8 and another in 1967 for
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, during her film career.
She is heavily into AIDS and HIV prevention campaigns, having started the American Foundation for AIDS Research after her friend Rock Hudson died of the disease. The actress herself has been afflicted with various health problems, including congestive heart failure, broken back, benign brain tumor, skin cancer, and pneumonia.
