‘I Felt Sorry for Him’: Elizabeth Taylor Admits Marrying Eddie Fisher Was A Big Blunder In Posthumous New Docu

Almost a decade after Elizabeth Taylor's death in 2011, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, a documentary on her life, sheds light on how she never loved her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher.

By Sweta Choudhury

Published on Jun 11, 2024 | 02:20 PM IST | 34.2K

Elizabeth Taylor- Getty Images

Almost a decade after she died in 2011, Elizabeth Taylor’s life was explored in the HBO documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 11, ahead of its August 3 streaming release on Max.

The documentary examined the life of the Oscar-winning actress through a unique format, using images, videos, and film clips accompanied by audio from a recently discovered series of interviews with journalist Richard Meryman beginning in 1964, along with a 1985 interview with Dominick Dunne.

While Taylor's career achievements were significant, this article will reflect on her relationship with her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher, with whom she described the marriage as a 'friggin' awful mistake'.

She said, "I liked him. I felt sorry for him," providing a throwback to one of her seven marriages. Scroll below for more.

Elizabeth Taylor on her marriage to her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher

Famously married eight times (twice to Richard Burton), actress Elizabeth Taylor never gave up on love or her search for an eligible soulmate. She met her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher while grieving the death of one of her major loves, her third husband, Mike Todd, who died unexpectedly in a plane crash on March 22, 1958.

At the time, Fisher was married to actress Debbie Reynolds—Taylor's friend and matron of honor at her wedding to Todd. Fisher ended up leaving Reynolds and married Taylor on May 12, 1959.

Taylor recalled that Eddie was Mike Todd's friend. “That was the only thing we had in common, was Mike,” she says in the documentary. “I never loved Eddie. I liked him. I felt sorry for him. And I liked talking [to him]. But he was not Mike,” she went on to say.

She also described her marriage to Fisher as a mistake, saying, “I don’t remember too much about my marriage to him, except it was one big, friggin' awful mistake. I knew it before we were married and didn’t know how to get out of it.”

What else is the documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes about?

Well, the documentary isn't just about Taylor's love life and marriages, but her career journey, her chemistry with her famous co-stars including Roddy McDowall, Montgomery Clift, and Rock Hudson, all of whom were homosexual, along with bits about her AIDS activism too.

Despite winning an Oscar for 1960's Butterfield 8 and 1966's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? amongst her notable series of films, she somehow lacked the respect she deserved as an actress, perhaps because of her controversial love life and string of marriages.

Nonetheless, this documentary is a reflection of how there lies beauty in the idea of imperfection, and why Taylor remains one of the most celebrated stars in Hollywood still today.

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