Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor in the Lifetime movie Liz & Dick. Lohan, 26 next July 2, plays Elizabeth Taylor (apparently) at about the time she met Richard Burton in the early 1960s. (Though the Lohan/Taylor picture above looks like something out Richard Brooks’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with Lohan as Maggie the Panther.) Grant Bowler, best known for True Blood and the box office and critical cataclysm Atlas Shrugged: Part I, plays Richard Burton.
The makeup job is impressive, helping to transform Lohan into Taylor. We’ll see – or rather, hear – if Lohan is able to reproduce Taylor’s tones as well.
Lindsay Lohan hasn’t been nominated for any Oscars yet, but … she has won an MTV Movie Award for her performance in the 2004 hit Mean Girls. And let’s not forget that she’s a Gotham Award and SAG Award nominee as part of the ensembles in, respectively, Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion and Emilio Estevez’s Bobby.
Directed by Lloyd Kramer (the TV movie David and Lisa) and written by Christopher Monger (Just Like a Woman, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain), Liz & Dick airs in October 2012. Also in the Liz & Dick cast: David Hunt, Tanya Franks (as Sybil Burton, Richard Burton’s wife at the time of Cleopatra), Massi Furland, Taylor Gerard Hart, and Henri Hereford.
Elizabeth Taylor tried to stop Liz
In Kevin Connor’s 1995 TV movie Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story, Sherilyn Fenn played Elizabeth Taylor. Nigel Havers was husband no. 2, British actor Michael Wilding; William McNamara was Montgomery Clift; Angus Macfadyen was Richard Burton; Corey Parker was Eddie Fisher; Katherine Helmond was Hedda Hopper; Daniel McVicar was Rock Hudson; Ray Wise was husband no. 3, Michael Todd; Judith Jones was Debbie Reynolds; Eric Gustavson was husband no. 1, Nicky Hilton; Patricia North was Richard Burton’s then-wife Sybil Burton; and Kevin McCarthy was producer Sol Siegel. At the time, Taylor unsuccessfully sued to prevent the showing of Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story.
Not that long ago, Catherine Zeta-Jones was to have played Elizabeth Taylor in a Montgomery Clift biopic. Zeta-Jones looks as much like Taylor as, say, My Week with Marilyn’s Julia Ormond looks like Vivien Leigh. (I think Jennifer Connelly would’ve been a better choice for either Taylor or Leigh.) But then again, if Michelle Williams could be transformed into Marilyn Monroe, anything is possible. (This is no putdown on Williams, who is remarkable in her own way.)
Now, is Lesley-Anne Down available to play Elizabeth Taylor in her later years? Or maybe Elizabeth McGovern?
1950s & 1960s gossip rags’ fave
Much has been said about how absurd it was to cast Lindsay Lohan, of rehab and courtroom notoriety, to play one of the most glamorous stars Hollywood has ever produced. What those people seem to forget – or be ignorant about – is that Elizabeth Taylor, long before she became a Dame of the (now-moribund) British Empire, long before her AIDS Foundation, and not that long before her two Oscar wins, was considered by many to be a selfish, reckless “whore.”
True, Taylor received four back-to-back Oscar nominations in the late 1950s – including a 1960 win, for surviving a tracheotomy (and for BUtterfield 8) – but her personal life had tongues wagging, fingers pointing, prudes proselytizing, and the media busy selling the latest “dirty” gossip item.
Shortly after the death of her third husband, Around the World in 80 Days producer Michael Todd, 26-year-old Elizabeth Taylor became involved with family friend Eddie Fisher, who at the time just happened to be married to all-American “girl-next-door” Debbie Reynolds of Singin’ in the Rain and Tammy and the Bachelor fame. A couple of years after “stealing” Fisher from Reynolds, Taylor began an affair with Richard Burton while filming Cleopatra on location in Italy.
Partly as a result of Taylor and Burton’s demands and overall behavior on the set, costs on Cleopatra – already a troubled production – soared. Things got so out of control that the nearly-bankrupt 20th Century Fox sued the couple for $50 million.
Update: The usual media frenzy ensued after Liz & Dick star Lindsay Lohan was found unconscious at Marina del Rey’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. As per later reports Lohan was suffering from “exhaustion” and “dehydration” after working on Liz & Dick throughout the previous night. In all, some good publicity for the television production.
notes
Lindsay Lohan Liz & Dick image: Lifetime.
*last modified in February 2026.