Elizabeth Taylor attempted suicide while married to her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher.
“Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes,” a new HBO documentary that premiered on August 3, features interviews the late movie star conducted with journalist Richard Meryman between 1964 and 1965.
In one of the taped interviews, Taylor called marrying Fisher “a terrible, terrible mistake.”
“Eddie made sure I felt lonely. We never went out,” she said.
The “Cleopatra” actress had an affair with Fisher while he was still married to Debbie Reynolds.
The two were reportedly married just three hours after Fisher and Reynolds’ divorce was finalized in 1959, and their relationship lasted four years.
In the documentary, Taylor told Merriman that she had become so depressed while married to Fisher that she attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills “intentionally, soberly, in front of Eddie.”
“I would rather die than get divorced,” she said in the audiotape. “I was tired of living.”
But Ms Taylor survived the attempt and later came to look back on it as “self-indulgent” due to the “horrific” consequences for her children.
Taylor had three children with Fisher: sons Michael Wilding Jr. and Christopher Wilding with her second husband Michael Wilding, and daughter Lisa Frances Todd with her third husband Mike Todd.
The Hollywood star and Fisher divorced in 1964, two years after Taylor began an affair with her “Cleopatra” co-star and second husband, Richard Burton.
In the documentary, Taylor says that during her affair with Burton, Fisher woke her up by sitting at her bedside, pointing a gun at her and saying, “I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to shoot you.”
Despite being married to Fisher, Taylor said she “never loved” her fourth husband.
“I liked him and I liked talking to him about Mike… I don’t remember much about the marriage, but it was a big mistake and I knew that before we got married,” she said of Fisher, the father of the late “Star Wars” icon Carrie Fisher.
Director Nanette Burstein also spoke about Taylor and Fisher’s tumultuous relationship.
“She never loved Eddie, and then all of a sudden she had an affair with him, and he was married to America’s sweetheart, Debbie Reynolds, and this was a huge scandal, and all of a sudden she was engaged to him,” Burstein, 54, told Entertainment Weekly in an interview.
“She knew it was a big mistake, but it was so public at that point that she didn’t know how to get out of it, so she just went for it. And, of course, the marriage didn’t last because she had no interest in marrying him.”
Last year, Reynolds and Fisher’s son, Todd Fisher, spoke about Taylor’s affair with her father in an interview with Fox News.
“My father left my mother for Elizabeth Taylor,” says Todd, 66. “A lot of people were upset about that.”
“A lot of people said, ‘Dad dumped the good girl for the bad girl’… Liz never hid the fact that she was a bad girl. She’s come a long way since ‘National Velvet,'” he said, adding that despite the scandalous affair, Reynolds “never dissed their father” in front of their children.
Taylor was married to seven men, but retired from public life after divorcing her last husband, Larry Fortensky, in 1996.
The actress died of heart failure in 2011 at the age of 79.
“Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” is available to stream on Max.
