Richard & Liz: 'Our Marriage Was Murder'

When Richard Burton first laid eyes on Elizabeth Taylor at a party in 1953, he said that the 19-year-old was “so extraordinarily beautiful that I nearly laughed out loud.” And while he made his interest obvious, she ignored him, finding “he was rather full of himself ”.

- Thomas Mitchell

Nearly a decade later, in 1961, their paths crossed again when Elizabeth was cast to play the lead in the epic blockbuster Cleopatra, which, at the time, became the most expensive movie ever made.

IT STARTED WITH A KISS

Richard was a last-minute replacement for the role of Liz’s on-screen lover Mark Antony. He boasted he would get the violet-eyed star into bed without any difficulty. “I just need two days with her. It’s guaranteed,” he reportedly claimed.

In the end it took five days. Their first filmed kiss kept going long after the cameras stopped rolling and soon their affair was obvious to everyone on set.

Although both were married at the time – Liz, then 29, to her fourth husband Eddie Fisher and Richard, then 36, to his first wife Sybil Williams – their affair quickly went public.