Elizabeth Taylor is widely remembered for her beauty and talent. But for those who knew and worked with her, she was primarily an “inspiring” mentor, friend, pioneering AIDS advocate and “big family person.”
“We see so many icons who get lost in their own image,” says Tim Mendelsoncotrustee of Taylor’s estate and her executive assistant from 1990 until her 2011 death from congestive heart failure at age 79. The late Oscar winner, he tells PEOPLE, “had a very clear understanding that there was a separation between Elizabeth Taylor, the commodity, the movie star, the public figure, and who she was in private and where her heart was.”
Where was her heart, exactly? “She really came from a place of love and compassion, and so much of that clearly comes from her own experiences in life,” says Mendelson. “She just wasn’t a judgmental person.”
Considering Taylor was judged so thoroughly, and often harshly, throughout her unprecedentedly public life, her forgiving nature may come as a surprise to fans. Director Nanette Burstein’s new documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (which made its world premiere at May’s Cannes Film Festival and debuts on HBO Aug. 3) includes newly unearthed recordings between Taylor and the late journalist Richard Meryman in 1964 and 1965 — a time when the her relationship with new husband Richard Burton (her fifth of seven total) created a worldwide scandal.
Through that tumultuous relationship and the ones that followed, recalls Mendelson, Taylor remained “grateful” for the opportunities the spotlight brought, despite her decades-long lack of privacy. “One time, Elizabeth and I had come back from a trip on a private plane, and we were in a limo, and I asked Elizabeth if the fame bothered her,” remembers Mendelson. “She said, ‘You know what? I appreciate everything it’s brought me. I like to have the private plane. I like to have the cars. I like the jewelry and everything.’ ”
That level of celebrity is what enabled Taylor to make the difference she did with AIDS research and awareness. It was soon after she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) in 1985 and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (etc) in 1991 — work that continues to this day — that Mendelson joined her inner circle, he tells PEOPLE.
Friendships with gay men like her Giant costar Rock Hudson, who died from AIDS in 1985, helped awake Taylor’s activist spirit. But working in Washington, D.C. to make the disease a medical rather than moral issue came from her empathy for all patients, says Mendelson. “Everybody wanted to judge the people who had AIDS and how they got AIDS. She understood that because she was so judged, (including) for who she slept with.”
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Another lesser-known fact about the mother of four is that she “was a very big family person,” according to Barbara BerkowitzTaylor’s lawyer and cotrustee. “In the 20-plus years that I worked with her, she always had her family there for holidays. It was very important to her to be the glue that kept all of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren together.”
Berkowitz was at a law firm where Taylor was a client, she adds. “This woman is a mentor,” she says, because the Cleopatra star convinced Berkowitz to “leave and go out on my own” to start a firm.
“She was fabulous,” says Berkowitz. “Fabulous, supportive, and (she) kept me on my feet. And here I am 34 years later, still very pleased to be in the Elizabeth Taylor world. If everybody could go through life with someone like Elizabeth Taylor over their shoulder supporting them, we’d have a much nicer world.”
Mendelson also recalls that Taylor “had a lot of childlike wonder to her, and she really held on to a part of herself that was innocent. And maybe because of being through so much, she recognized the importance of holding on to a sense of joy, a sense of surprise.”
One such example: Taylor used to ask Mendelson to fetch her boxes containing her various diamonds and brooches, simply to marvel at them. “She just kept letting life be fun,” he recalls. “And that’s really, I think, how she survived… She was really focused on just living life to the fullest.”
Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes will premiere on HBO Aug. 3.
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