- Person
- Elizabeth Taylor
- Lived
- 1932–2011
- Field
- AIDS advocacy
- From
- British-American
The story
Elizabeth Taylor was one of the most famous film stars in the world. She converted to Judaism in 1959. In the mid 1980s, when AIDS was spreading fast and carried heavy stigma, she became one of the first celebrities to take up the cause, and she put her fame behind the fight against the disease for the rest of her life.
Her commitment dated from 1984. That year she helped organise and host the first AIDS fundraiser to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles. In 1985 her friend and former co-star Rock Hudson announced that he was dying of AIDS. In August 1985 Taylor and the physician Michael Gottlieb founded the National AIDS Research Foundation. The next month it merged with the AIDS foundation of the scientist Mathilde Krim to form the American Foundation for AIDS Research, known as amfAR.
Taylor became amfAR's Founding National Chairman and its principal spokesperson. In 1986 she starred in a series of amfAR television spots and made countless public appearances on the foundation's behalf. She attracted two gifts of $1 million and later travelled to Thailand, Japan and repeatedly to Europe to help expand its work to other countries. She also supported amfAR's push for needle exchange programmes as part of HIV prevention.
amfAR's work has centred on AIDS research, education and advocacy. Taylor also used her influence beyond the foundation: she persuaded President Ronald Reagan to acknowledge the disease in a 1987 speech. At a time when people with AIDS were often shunned, the sight of one of Hollywood's biggest stars standing beside them and asking the public to give helped to change attitudes and bring in money for research.
Over her lifetime Taylor helped raise more than $270 million for the fight against HIV and AIDS. From the early 1990s until 2011 she devoted much of her time to this philanthropy, and amfAR remains one of her most lasting legacies.
Why it matters
amfAR, which Elizabeth Taylor helped found and lead, continues to fund research toward better treatment, prevention and a cure for HIV, benefiting people with HIV around the world.
About Elizabeth Taylor
Hollywood legend and convert to Judaism who used her fame to fight AIDS when few would touch it, co-founding amfAR and her own foundation and raising hundreds of millions.
More about Elizabeth Taylor
Sources
- Dame Elizabeth Taylor amfAR
- Elizabeth Taylor Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.