Taylor and Her Tots
Taylor on the set of Cleopatra with their children Liza Todd and Chris Wilding.
Taylor on the set of Cleopatra with their children Liza Todd and Chris Wilding.
Taylor leaving Rome's Teatro Sistina after receiving a Silver Mask Award from the Italian press. Across the Tiber River, the pope later would call Taylor and Burton's affair "erotic vagrancy."
The first cut of the film he showed the studio was six hours long. The final cut was three hours and 12 minutes.
The film cost $44 million, a fortune in 1963 (equal to $330 million today). The production used 26,000 costumes and 79 sets, according to Gianopulos. Burton and Taylor, both married to other people at the time, went on to marry and divorce– twice– and make six more movies together.
"She was so strikingly gorgeous," says Gianopulos. A week after the Cannes screening, Gianopulos' studio will release an anniversary edition Blu-ray of of Cleopatra on May 28.
Taylor dressed as the last Egyptian pharaoh.