Candid Photos from Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour of an Icon

Elizabeth Taylor snapped this selfie with a Polaroid camera on the set of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966, capturing her transformation into one of the most iconic characters of her career. In the film, Elizabeth morphed from a 32-year-old Hollywood icon into Martha, a bitter, acrid-tongued 52-year-old. The transformation was both physical and emotional: she gained thirty pounds for the role, wore facial prosthetics, and deliberately shattered the glamorous public image the world had come to associate with her. Elizabeth later described the script as one of the most challenging she had ever read, yet she tackled it with the enthusiasm and intensity that defined her career. The result? Her second Academy Award and what many consider to be her greatest performance. The image was first featured in Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour of an Icon, the first authorized biography of Elizabeth.