Want to know the best Elizabeth Taylor movies? How about the worst Elizabeth Taylor movies? Curious about Ingrid Bergman’s box office grosses or which Elizabeth Taylor movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Elizabeth Taylor movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) was a two time Best Actress Oscar® winner. She is one of the few child stars to succeed as an adult actor as well. From 1944’s National Velvet to her death, she was one of the most famous people in the world…a pretty good run for 67 years. Her IMDb page shows 72 acting credits from 1942-2001. This page will rank 47 Elizabeth Taylor movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in North American theaters were not included in the rankings.
Elizabeth Taylor Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Elizabeth Taylor Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Elizabeth Taylor movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Elizabeth Taylor movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Elizabeth Taylor movies by yearly box office rank
- Sort Elizabeth Taylor movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Elizabeth Taylor movie received.
- Sort Elizabeth Taylor movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the sort and search button to make this a very interactive page. For example type in *** to see all Oscar nominated Taylor performances….or type Burton in the search box to bring up all of the Richard Burton/Taylor movies.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Elizabeth Taylor
1. Elizabeth Taylor was born in London, England. Her famous double eyelashes and her violet eyes caused many people to suggest to her mother that Taylor should try out for the role of Bonnie Blue (Scarlet’s daughter) in Gone With The Wind. Her mother refused the idea.
2. In 1942, two studios (MGM and Universal Pictures) got in a bidding war for her services. Universal signed her to a 7 year contract but canceled the contract after her first movie 1942’s There’s One Born Every Second. MGM then signed her and she became a huge child star.
3. Elizabeth Taylor’s first hit was 1944’s National Velvet. She also appeared in the very first Lassie movie 1943’s Lassie Come Home. The first time she received top billing was in 1946’s The Courage of Lassie.
4. As an older teenager she became a young bride in the box office hits 1947’s Life With Father and 1950’s Father of the Bride. The success of these two movies paved the way for her success as an adult actress. From 1950 to 1966 she was the most successful actress working. During this time frame 7 of her movies were nominated for Oscars® for Best Picture….1950’s Father of the Bride, 1951’s A Place In The Sun, 1952’s Ivanhoe, 1956’s Giant, 1958’s Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, 1963’s Cleopatra and 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe.
5. Elizabeth Taylor earned 5 Oscar® nominations for Best Actress winning 2 times. Her two wins were for 1960’s Butterfield 8 and 1966’s Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolfe. Her other three nominations were for 1957’s Raintree Country, 1958’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and 1959’s Suddenly, Last Summer.
6. Probably her most famous role was in 1963’s Cleopatra. Even though it is ranked on the all-time inflated box office chart in 40th place with over 546 million dollars, Cleopatra was considered a disappointment at the box office. This was due to the outrageous and out of control film’s budget.
7. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton worked together in 12 projects. 10 are movies listed in this page the other two are 1972’s Divorce Hers-Divorce His(tv movie) and Anne of the Thousand Days(Taylor is uncredited).
8. Elizabeth Taylor was married 8 times including two times to Richard Burton. Her husbands…Conrad Hilton (from famous Hilton hotel family) Michael Widling (two boys came out of this marriage), Michael Todd (one daughter out of this marriage), Eddie Fisher (adopted daughter out of this marriage), Burton, John Warner (US Senator) and Larry Fortensky (met at Betty Ford clinic).
9. Elizabeth Taylor said she had three loves in her life….Michael Todd, Richard Burton and jewelry. Pieces of her jewelry collection were recently auctioned off for 115 million dollars. On the humanitarian side of things she was the co-founder of American Foundation of AIDS research and hosted the first ever AIDS fundraiser in 1984.
10. Check out Elizabeth Taylor‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Adjusted Worldwide Box Office Grosses on 25 Elizabeth Taylor Movies
Steve’s Elizabeth Taylor You Tube Video
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For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
Steve’s Elizabeth Taylor You Tube Video is now “on” the page.
Muchas gracias, mi amigo
nema na čemu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpS5vQzgcSw
“Darn it….my lengthy comment just disappeared. Why I do not like doing comments on my iPhone. Voted up….but not yet shared. Great posters, great video on one of the greatest movie stars of all-time. Looks like I managed to avoid the worst of the Burton/Taylor movies…as my first matches were The VIPs and Under Milk Wood. Seen 8 of her Top 10….but do not like Va Wolfe and thought Sudden,y Last Summer was horrible. Well add this video to our Taylor page when we get home. Nice expanded video.”
Hi Bruce, thanks for attempting to comment via iPhone, appreciate the link. I thought Liz deserved an expanded video and she did make plenty of movies. Her most famous film didn’t even crack the top 10. Cheers.
It was once reported that Richard Burton said that when he first got into bed with Liz he was broke and when he got out again he was worth a million dollars. An interviewer quizzed him about that quote and he replied indignantly “I NEVER said that.” Burton then laughed and added “But it WAS true!”
And undoubtedly it was – because although Burton had been successful in Hollywood during the 1950s he was not then a superstar, but once he tied in and made films with Liz in their peak period 1963-1969 he became one of the biggest and highest paid stars of the US and global cinema securing top billing over icons such as Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner and Clint Eastwood. He was once asked in those days to do a benefit stage performance for a small, select group of people and he tersely replied “Richard Burton doesn’t perform in front of THIRTY people!”
LIZ VIDEO 50-25 Great POSTERS are undoubtedly in my view Boom, Hammersmith is Out, Dr Faustus, foreign language one for Ash Wednesday, The Only Game in Town, Rhapsody foreign language one, two crackers for Beau Brummel {“Adventurer, lover scoundrel – here was a man!” was the tagline on the initial release posters] and 3 racy ones for X, Y and Zee, The Girl who Had Everything and The Comedians.
Reasonable run of STILLS in Part One with most if not all worth mentioning – (1) Liz with Dean (2) lobby card with Sir Mike (3) Liz in bed with TWO “hellraisers” both looking as if they were in their usual real-life state of intoxication! (4) unusual coloured one from Reflections in a Golden Eye of Liz with your own favourite speech therapist “He tried to intimidate me with his great reputation as an actor but I wasn’t frightened of him.” Interviewer “Did you like him?” Liz “I adored him!” (5) with The Cowboy of the Century himself, Robert Taylor in Conspirator. She was only 17 then and she told in a interview of how chivalrous he was and during the making of the film and took her to dine once in a cosy restaurant.
BOB’s BILLING WATCH In all of the movies in which they had equal parts Liz was billed first. However in The Comedians, Dr Faustus and Under Milk Wood Richard had the bigger roles and he got 1st billing. He joked once that he should also have got top billing over her in Taming of the Shrew as he came form the UK and had a theatrical background and that film was of course Shakespeare! Liz also had an uncredited cameo in Richard’s Anne of 1000 Days. To be continued——–
HI STEVE PART ONE LIZ SENT TO YOU YESTERDAY
Liz is ranked 7th on AFI’s female Legends list, well up there with Davis, Crawford, Garland, Bergman, Monroe etc. and regardless of where you, Bruce, Joel, others and I might personally place her in the pecking order she was undoubtedly the real deal as a big box office star in the true Hollywood style, unlike many so-called female [and male]stars today who as I’ve said are little more than “famous for being famous”, who should stick to opening cans of beans rather than trying to open a film and who among the women probably would have had the rank of STARLET or at most been a B-lister in old Hollywood alongside the likes of Liz
TAYLOR VIDEO 1-24
Best POSTERS Night Watch, two magnificent ones for The Courage of Asta, a particularly raunchy one for Butterfield 8, Jane Eyre, Asta Come Home and a splendid run of foreign language posters for Secret Ceremony, Elephant Walk, Taming of the Shrew, Maggie the Cat, and Giant. The 2nd one for Cleo was the most original I’ve ever seen for that movie
Top STILLS I think are Liz with Asta, her with Fisher, her with “Sir Ivanhoe” Liz looking highly regal as Cleo, the real life scandalous lovers making love on screen in Cleo, Liz being spanked by Father of the Bride [If Melvyn Douglas is to be believed Tracy would probably would have loved to do that on Gable for Clark being billed above Spence in Boom Town!] Elizabeth with Mickey Rooney in National Velvet, Liz and her great off-screen friend Monty in Place in the Sun [which Welles proclaimed as “The greatest film ever made about America] and Liz as very sexy swimsuit “bait” for young studs – “Suddenly Last Summer Cathy realized she was being used for something evil.”
Par excellence overall the Taylor video and well deserving a 99% rating from yours truly. You and WH agree on 3 of Liz’s Top 6 best reviewed films –Giant, Virginia Woolf and Maggie the Cat.
STEVE’S TOP 6 IN RANK ORDER
1/Giant
2/Virginia Woolf
3/Cat on Hot Tin Roof
4/Place in the Sun
5/Suddenly Last Summer
6/Taming of Shrew
BRUCE’s TOP 6
1/Giant
2/Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
3/Virginia Woolf
4/Father of the Bride
5/Life with Father
6/National Velvet
Hello Bob, sorry for my late reply I was actually waiting for the 2nd part of your review to materialize before commenting, and than have it all done in one post. More tidy that way. Well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. 😉
Thanks for the review, very generous rating, trivia, quotes, billing info and comparison, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, lobby cards and stills.
Plenty of posters and stills in Liz’s video, she was very photogenic and so were her co-stars. I wonder how many Americans realised back then that some of their top rated stars were actually born in England and not true red white & blue yankee doodle dandys? i.e. Liz Taylor, Bob Hope, Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks Jr!
I was kidding about Fairbanks but he was such a huge anglophile he probably wished he was born in England. He loved mixing with the Royals. Even his accent seemed to lean towards the upper class British.
5 Liz Taylor films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources, less than I thought –
Giant
Life With Father
National Velvet
Father of the Bride
Lassie Come Home
Four more scored 9 out of 10 including Virginia Woolf, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Place in the Sun. Those are the three I thought would get 10 out of 10, hmm it’s good to be unpredictable eh? [Bob grunts] But the final totting up of the various scores gives a better picture of her best rated films as your comparison list demonstrates.
No.1 films at IMDB were a tie between Virginia Woolf and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Virginia Woolf topped Rotten Tomatoes chart. Bruce and I have the same no.1 on our charts – Giant.
Did no one like her most famous and most successful movie, Cleopatra? Is that the right word ‘successful’? The film was so expensive it nearly toppled 20th Century Fox, being the no.1 film of the year wasn’t enough.
Liz on Clark Gable – “He was the epitome of the movie star — so romantic, such bearing, such friendliness.”
Liz on John Wayne – “His image had as much impact in the world as many of our presidents have had, but Duke was a great actor, a great humanitarian, but always himself. To be a friend was a lifetime thing.”
Liz on Montgomery Clift – “The most gorgeous thing in the world, the most emotional actor I have ever worked with and easily one of the best actors.”
Richard Burton on Liz Taylor – “a brilliant actress and beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography.”
I’ll pop round later to check out Bruce’s latest pages.
Do I dream or do I doubt,
Do mine eyes deceive me?
Are things what they seem.
Or are visions [and Steve] about?
Actually I guessed you were waiting for Part 2 from me but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to wind you up! Thanks for the feedback, additional information and delicious quotes.
Actually I used to think without question that Doug Jr [or Jaymar as his stepmother Mary Pickford nicknamed him] was English until I read up on his legendary silent screen swashbuckling father and learned that both of them were American.
When I look at how your politicians seemingly grovel to the economic/military power of the Yanks it doesn’t surprise me that so many English thespians have Americanized themselves. Nor does it surprise me that The Americans are taken in by the latter progression as we are all guilty of “judging a book by its cover” when seduced by the hype of our idols. Indeed some Yanks do reciprocate as witnessed by the fact that two of this site’s own Leader’s top three male screen idols are English born!
Some modern film historians insist that the budgetary excesses of Cleopatra and the equally infamous and also very popular 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty were the fault of studio executives and that the latter scapegoated Liz and Marlon in the way that politicians scapegoat others for their own political mistakes. There was pressure on for Taylor and Brando to be run out of Hollywood back then and historians reckon that “scandal” quickly saved Taylor [as you keep reminding us “sex sells”] but that Marlon’s career languished a decade later until rescued by Godpop and the domino success that it gave Last Tango. The historians argue that whilst Liz and your speech therapist could be a pain in the a** neither of them had control of the massive budgets concerned.
In terms of audience participation both Wikipedia and Bruce’s 1963 annual review are agreed that Cleo was the most successful film of 1963 and Wiki reckons the film eventually recouped its investment in 1966 when the TV rights were sold to ABC.
In terms of which of Liz’s films was the most profitable that honour would probably go to one of her other monster audience hits as a lead actress such as Giant, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or Suddenly Last Summer. Raintree County, although as Bruce shows its earnings were almost identical to that of Suddenly last Summer , apparently lost MGM around $4.5 million in 2018 dollars because of steep production costs. Indeed at the time it was thought by journalists that its failure commercially might well spell the end of the Hollywood epic until of course good ole Chuck Heston came to the rescue with the massive success of Ben Hur. Talk to you later about little Aud.
Good stuff as always Bob, thanks.
Here’s a link to a funny photo of Brando ‘photobombing’ Liz Taylor –
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hN4kachRR4A/V6eSP6z1ojI/AAAAAAACUek/Vu_xLQxIhWcdMtUVqDBpsuETZlGS0cwPwCLcB/s1600/marlon-brando-photobombs-elizabeth-1967.jpg
I hope the link gets through the UMR filters.
HI STEVE
Got through to the link OK
Very funny! It seems on the one hand to prove what Jean Simmons said in an interview that MB often didn’t take things too seriously. On the other hand Liz looks so lovely in that one that I suppose he had to do something to divert the eyes of warm-blooded guys like you and Bruce away from M-s Taylor! Even I would not want to look at your fave speech therapist if Liz was about!
Actually given that they both had reputations for being awkward it surprises me how well they allegedly actually got on in real life. He accepted an award on her behalf once and she invited him to dinner at her apartment on another occasion. Apparently when he arrived she told him that she had a treat for him and it turned out to be a private screening of The Godfather.to which he vehemently protested “No! No! Well all right then!”
That dinner was allegedly platonic. He romanced many of his leading ladies but I’m not sure if Liz was ever one of them. It has been suggested that he often joined Taylor and Burton and others aboard their yacht for ocean spins and that ultimately Burton and he got into a fist fight on deck over Liz but Burton’s diaries although they mention socialising with Marlon quite a lot do not as far as I understand mention any fist-fight.
Anyway thanks for sharing that photo with me. You must have at your disposal a great treasure trove of photos of the Greats. Lucky man!
HI BRUCE
1 I actually thought that you would have had a stab at Cleo because various sources quote that movie’s WW actual gross as $72 million which pro-rata with your own adjusted domestic gross for the film aligned to the actual domestic figure of around $58 million that you quoted originally would equate to an adjusted worldwide figure of approx $735 million;
2 However you always give us a greater volume of WW figures and in a more comprehensive format than is provided elsewhere so I’m not complaining !!
Hey Bob….currently I do not have a decent enough source to list worldwide grosses on Cleopatra….your numbers seem logical. There is a 20th Century Fox out there that might have that information….currently it is not in my possession to check that out.
1 Myrna Loy was one of the most important females of the classic era and the films in which she appeared have the highest overall Cogerson adjusted domestic gross of any actress. However I feel that ELIZABETH TAYLOR is one of those actresses who in their heyday were actually bigger box office draws than Myrna with Shirley Temple,Joan Crawford Betty Grable Doris Day and for a little while Deanna Durbin along with Streisand and Julia Roberts in modern times being other examples of feminine stars who had the personal popularity to ‘open’ a film.
2 Anyway this Taylor update is most timely for me because I’m currently doing a Liz Taylor project for private amusement and the 24 highly informative worldwide grosses are proving a great help in making my exercise as comprehensive as possible. Once more I can only marvel at the attention to detail that goes into the production of these Cogerson tables and admire the remarkable consistency with the information is where appropriate repeated throughout the site.
Hey Bob….glad my updated page is helping you out. Actually the page only had a few things changed….the 1946 Lassie movie and one of the 1948 Judy movies are the biggest changes. Taylor average per box office is amazing……she was near the top of the charts on my 1950s and 1960s decade pages…when looking at average grosses…..the 1970s were not too impressive.
Thanks for the kind words about the website….sadly the “dynamic” website is off to a slow start….but one day….one day. 🙂
BRUCE
The WW grosses were the real boon. Thanks again – and yes I did pick up the Lassie change but such is my faith in you that I assumed that it was YOURS TRULY who had got the previous figure wrong!
BOB
Hey Bob…I actually thought there would be more than 24 worldwide grosses….nope I had the Courage of Lassie……the actual rental numbers are sitting right there in the MGM ledgers….when I first wrote Taylor’s page…I did not have access to those ledgers….that is my story….and I am sticking to it….lol.