27 February: Elizabeth Taylor

The actress Elizabeth Taylor was born on this date in 1932. Here are 10 things you might not know about her.

1. She was born in London, in Barnet to be exact, and lived in London until the age of seven. Her parents were American, and had come to England to set up an art gallery. The family moved to America when the second world war was brewing and set up home in Los Angeles.
2. It was there that a family friend suggested Elizabeth should take a screen test. Universal Pictures signed her, and she made her first film with them, There's One Born Every Minute, which was released when she was ten. Universal dropped her contract after that one film, but Elizabeth was soon picked up by MGM.
3. She had unique Eyes. Not only were they such a deep Blue that they sometimes appeared Purple, she also had a genetic mutation known as lymphedema-distichiassyndrome which meant she had twice as many eyelashes as anyone else.
4. She was 15 when she first appeared on a magazine cover, that of Life magazine. She went on to appear on many more covers during her life. In fact, the only person who's been on the cover of People more than she has is Princess Diana.
5. She was the first woman to make a million dollars for a single movie. That was Cleopatra.
6. Taylor was raised as a Christian Scientist, and converted to Judaism in 1959.
7. She broke her back while filming National Velvet in 1944, but the fracture went undetected for years. That, and the fact she was born with scoliosis, meant she suffered from back problems for most of her life.
8. She was married eight times, twice to the same man. Her first marriage was to Conrad Hilton Jr. when she was 18. He turned out to be violent and abusive, so the marriage only lasted 8 months. The second was British actor Michael Wilding. They had two children but drifted apart eventually and were divorced. The third was film producer Mike Todd, which might have lasted as in later years Elizabeth would say he was one of the loves of her life; but he died in a plane crash. Her affair and subsequent marriage to Eddie Fisher was probably on the rebound from that, and three years later she began an affair with the other love of her life, Richard Burton. They married and divorced twice. She married her sixth husband, John Warner, in 1976 and her seventh husband, Larry Fortensky, in 1991. She would claim in an interview in her later life that had Richard Burton not died, she would have considered marrying him for a third time.
9. She was the first celebrity to create a signature fragrance. In collaboration with Elizabeth Arden, Inc., she launched two best-selling perfumes – Passion in 1987, and White Diamonds in 1991, and went on to create nine more.
10. She also owned some serious jewellery including the "Krupp Diamond", the Duchess of Windsor’s Diamond brooch, the Grand Duchess of Russia’s emeralds, the "LaPeregina Pearl", and the famous pear-shaped 69-carat "Burton-Cartier Diamond". She was actually a jewellery expert as well.

Character birthday

Papa Razzi, aka Gideon, a member of the Fortelli gangster family based in New York. His name derives partly from the fact he has a couple of children and partly from his use of a modified camera, which not only takes pictures but can be used as a dazzling weapon or emit a paralysing gas. At crime scenes, he is often assumed to be a reporter rather than one of the gangsters.