Hris Wilding, son of Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor, recounts the downsides of his mother's fame, revealing how constant media attention and public scrutiny negatively impacted their family life.
hris Wilding is a shy man approaching 70. As a little boy, he was also shy. He used to get embarrassed when his mother turned up at school for parents’ day. Everybody made such a hoo-ha about it. There she would be, in her furs and finery, done up to the nines. She was so famous and infamous, sexy and scandalous, and he would never hear the end of it. And yet to him she was just Mom.
He says his mother initially became famous, “because she was extraordinarily beautiful. I think her beauty mostly helped ensure she had constant, steady work, but I think it hindered her too, in that she wasn’t taken seriously as an actress, or as seriously as she deserved to be, because she was so beautiful. People figured she got the work just because she was beautiful, rather than being a good actress.
Her life story is told in a new three-part BBC documentary, Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar. There’s fabulous vintage footage, rare interviews, and those closest to her talk about what made her tick. There’s Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris Jackson, Hollywood royalty Joan Collins and Sharon Stone, reality star/businesswoman Kim Kardashian and former lover George Hamilton. One of the most quietly considered voices we hear is Wilding’s.
Taylor with her third husband, Mike Todd, and her sons, two-year-old Christopher Wilding and four-year-old Michael Wilding, on board the Queen Elizabeth in New York in April 1957, before sailing to France for the summer.When asked to play Cleopatra in 1958, she demanded $1m. It was ludicrous. No actress would be paid $1m. But the studio coughed up because she was Taylor. “She understood the power and value of her beauty and used it for all it was worth,” Wilding says.
Christopher Wilding looks on as his mother applies eye makeup for her role as Cleopatra in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s 1963 film. Loris Loddi, who plays Cleopatra’s son, is on the right.It is the relationship with Burton that Wilding remembers most clearly. Sometimes he refers to Burton as Richard, sometimes as Dad. “I’ve obviously cycled through several stepfathers,” he says. “But Richard was there for the main formative years, so he was the main one for me.
By 1974, Burton drank three bottles of vodka a day, while Taylor was also an alcoholic and addicted to pain-killers. Wilding says there were times when he was terrified of going into her bedroom because he expected to find her dead. She was attended to by doctors who would overprescribe to order. Today, Wilding says, they would probably be jailed.
Despite her self-destructive ways, Taylor was happy for much of her life, but living in Washington with Warner from the mid-1970s to early 1980s she hit a low. “She loved John and he loved her, but she was a fish out of water in Washington. She didn’t have a purpose there and didn’t have anything to do other than be a supportive wife in the background. She was depressed.” Taylor put on weight and was monstered by the press for it.
After Burton and Taylor split up, Wilding remained close to Burton, and continued to think of him as his second father. “One time when I was in Europe I visited Richard and he drove me to the airport as he always did, just to hang out with me till my flight left. I was sober at that point, and he wanted to know how I did it. I talked to him about AA, but he felt he had to do it himself. He understood he was a better person and happier when he was sober but he would always relapse.
When he visited his mother at the centre, Wilding says it was clear who was in charge. “She had all those therapists wrapped tightly around her little finger.” Despite her talk, she remained addicted to pills. “She went to AA meetings for a while, but she slowly backslid.” Did she stand by him after the allegations of child sexual abuse? “Yes. She was a staunch friend to everyone she loved.” Damning evidence about Jackson emerged in the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, long after he and Taylor had died. Does Wilding think if she were around today, she would she still be fighting his corner? “I think so, yes.”
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