The HBO Unique documentary ELIZABETH TAYLOR: THE LOST TAPES, directed by award-winning filmmaker Nanette Burstein (“Hillary,” “The Child Stays within the Image”), debuts SATURDAY, AUGUST 3 (8:00 p.m.–9:45 p.m. ET/PT) on HBO and shall be accessible to stream on Max. An official number of the 2024 Tribeca Movie Pageant, the movie had its world premiere on the 2024 Cannes Movie Pageant.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR: THE LOST TAPES permits Elizabeth Taylor’s personal voice to relate her story, inviting audiences to rediscover not only a mega star of Hollywood’s Golden Age however a posh lady who navigated lifelong fame, private id, and public scrutiny on a worldwide stage from early childhood. By newly recovered interviews with Taylor and unprecedented entry to the film star’s private archive, the movie reveals the complicated inside life and vulnerability of the Hollywood legend whereas additionally difficult audiences to recontextualize her achievements and her legacy.
In 1964, on the peak of her fame, Elizabeth Taylor sat down with journalist Richard Meryman for a candid, intensive interview. Drawing from 40 hours of the newly unearthed audio interviews and extraordinary entry to non-public images, house motion pictures, archival interviews, and information footage, illustrated with clips from the enduring roles that mirror her real-life challenges and triumphs, ELIZABETH TAYLOR: THE LOST TAPES supplies essentially the most intimate portrait of the actress to this point. Modest, bawdy, charming, sincere, at occasions annoyed, Taylor involves life as she discusses her movie debut in 1943’s “Lassie Come House,” her wrestle to free herself from the restrictions of ingénue roles, her benchmark roles in “Big,” “Cat on a Sizzling Tin Roof,” and “Butterfield 8,” for which she received her first of two Academy Awards®, and the excesses of taking pictures the troubled epic 1963 movie “Cleopatra.” Taylor additionally speaks unguardedly about her marriages and youngsters, her shut friendships with Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, and Roddy McDowall, and her fifth marriage to Richard Burton, with whom she would star in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” successful her second Academy Award®. Peeling again the layers of considered one of cinema’s most enduring icons, the conversations reveal a girl at odds along with her display picture, craving for respect and company, whereas ceaselessly beneath the microscope of scrutinizing press and the general public.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR: THE LOST TAPES gives an unprecedented window into the lifetime of a girl who defied the period’s expectations, finally discovered peace inside herself, and who cemented her legacy by turning the tables on her personal fame by turning into a fierce activist and advocate for the LGBTQ neighborhood.
Alongside Elizabeth Taylor, the documentary options the voices of actors Roddy McDowall, Debbie Reynolds, Richard Burton, George Hamilton, producer Sam Marx, brokers Marion Rosenberg and John Heyman, longtime assistant and co-Trustee Tim Mendelson, and buddies Liz Smith and Doris Brynner.
HBO Documentary Movies presents ELIZABETH TAYLOR: THE LOST TAPES, a Zipper Bros movie, Gerber Footage, Sutter Highway Image Firm, and Unhealthy Robotic manufacturing in affiliation with Home of Taylor. Directed by Nanette Burstein; produced by J.J. Abrams, Sean Stuart, Glen Zipper, Invoice Gerber, and Rachel Rusch Wealthy; government produced by Nanette Burstein, Barbara Berkowitz, Tim Mendelson, and Quinn Tivey. For HBO: government producers, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, and Sara Rodriguez.