HBO’s Mesmerizing Documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes allows the Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor’s own voice to narrate her compelling story with the classic “Easy Living”
On August 3, 2024, HBO unveiled a compelling portrait of Hollywood
legend and activist, Elizabeth Taylor, available to stream on Max. Directed by Nanette Burstein, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes celebrated its world premiere at The Cannes Film Festival, offering audiences a rare glimpse into Elizabeth’s life, told in her own words. Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes allows Elizabeth Taylor’s own voice to narrate her story, inviting audiences to rediscover not just a megastar of Hollywood’s Golden Age but a complex woman who navigated lifelong fame, personal identity, and public scrutiny on a global stage from an early childhood.
Through newly recovered interviews with Taylor and unprecedented access to the movie star’s personal archive, the film reveals the complex inner life and vulnerability of the Hollywood legend while also challenging audiences to recontextualize 
her achievements and her legacy. Via audio tapes discovered in the archive of journalist Richard Meryman, we are guided by Taylor’s voice as she walks the audience from the first step of her career through her time with Burton in the 1970s. As she reveals intimacies about her relationships, romantic and otherwise, she peels back the layers of a beloved public figure to reveal a vulnerable, funny and tenacious woman who persevered despite a life led almost entirely under the scrutiny of public opinion.
Nanette Burstein’s documentary offers a fresh perspective on a Hollywood icon, inviting viewers to reevaluate her impact on film and the world at large. The film allows Elizabeth’s own voice to narrate her story, accompanied by personal photos, home movies, and clips from her unforgettable roles that echo her real-life challenges and triumphs. More than a retelling of an extraordinary life, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes is a deep dive into Elizabeth’s complexities, allowing viewers to rediscover her as she navigated lifelong fame, identity, and public scrutiny all on a global scale. What emerges is the story of a woman who refused to be defined by the limitations imposed upon her by society, from portraying strong-willed women on-screen to the vulnerability that guided her every step.
Hers was a life spent under the microscope: a whirlwind arrival on the studio film scene as a child, a series of truncated marriages that filled the pages of gossip rags around the world, plaguing health issues and decades-long friendships with a group of men whose secrets and lives she honored as if they were her own. But most of all, Elizabeth Taylor’s off-and-on relationship with whom many considered her true love, Richard Burton, became the stuff of Hollywood legend as its romantic highs and dramatic lows were followed fanatically by fans around the world. In a scene titled on the screen “Meet Miss Taylor,” we learn about the romance life of the legendary actress with headlines and video clips – all unfolding to Billie Holiday singing one of her signature jazz songs — “Easy Living.”