Elizabeth Taylor’s Nominations: 5
1957: Raintree Country
1958: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
1959: Suddnely, Last Summer
1960: Butterfield 8
1966: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Liz Taylor received 5 Oscar nominations, all in the Best Actress category, four of which in consecutive years. She won two Best Actress oscars, in 1960 and in 1966.
Though it lost in each of its six nominations, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was one of 1958’s most honored films, in which Elizabeth Taylor excelled as Maggie, the sexy wife punished by her alcoholic husband (Paul Newman, also nominated) who won’t sleep with her.
The scandalous Suddenly Last Summer, a chronicle of incest, cannibalism, and insanity, contrasts Katharine Hepburn, as a demented aristocratic mother in love with her homosexual poetson, with Elizabeth Taylor, as her niece, who almost goes mad after witnessing her cousin’s rape and murder. Both Hepburn and Taylor received Best Actress nominations, though neither won; the winner was Simon Signoret for Room At the Top.
The prostitute with a heart of gold is also an enduring screen image, and the second most prevalent Oscar role for women. Elizabeth Taylor won her first Oscar for Butterfield 8 (based on John O’Hara’s novel) as Gloria Wandrous, a New York call girl.
Gloria describes herself as “the slut of all times,” but basically she is a goodnatured woman whose main aspiration in life is to gain respectability, marry a decent man, and live a suburban life. However, trapped in bad circumstances and unable to forget her past, there is no hope for Gloria. After a disastrous affair with a wealthy and married Yale graduate (Laurence Harvey), she finds her death in a fatal car crash.
