She died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalised for about six weeks, said publicist Sally Morrison.
Taylor was the most blessed and cursed of actresses, the toughest and the most vulnerable.
She had extraordinary grace, wealth and voluptuous beauty, and won three Academy Awards, including a special one for her humanitarian work.
She was the most loyal of friends and a defender of gays in Hollywood when AIDS was still a stigma in the industry and beyond. But she was afflicted by ill health, failed romances (eight marriages, seven husbands) and personal tragedy.
"I think I'm becoming fatalistic," she said in 1989. "Too much has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic."
Her more than 50 movies included unforgettable portraits of innocence and of decadence, from the children's classic "National Velvet" and the sentimental family comedy "Father of the Bride" to Oscar-winning transgressions in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Butterfield 8."
Text: AP
Image: In this 1957 file photo, actress Elizabeth Taylor is shown in costume for her character in the film "Raintree County." (Photographs copyright AP)
