Tour Elizabeth Taylor's House and Garden in Bel Air

This article originally appeared in the July 2011 issue of Architectural Digest.

Staggering beauty, spectacular jewels, and a lust for life contributed to Elizabeth Taylor’s boldface persona. And yet the late actress—Oscar winner, AIDS activist, best-selling perfumer, and a Dame to boot—was refreshingly relaxed in her off-duty hours.

Taylor’s home, which she invited Architectural Digest to photograph this past spring (the shoot was under way at the time of her death), was a four-bedroom house on a secluded, wooded acre in Bel Air, California. The star of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? purchased the property in the early 1980s and refined it with the help of interior designer and close friend Waldo Fernandez. What they created was a world away from the actress’s previous homes: a Virginia farm and Georgetown townhouse she shared with her sixth husband, Senator John Warner.

Though its walls displayed Impressionist paintings (Taylor’s father was an art dealer) and its gardens were lush with roses (the plantings influenced the perfume line Taylor launched in 1987), the home was about family and fun, not fame and flashbulbs. “Of course when she had to appear at an important event, she would put on the most beautiful dress and the most amazing jewelry and become Elizabeth Taylor, the star,” says fashion designer Valentino, who met the actress in the early ’60s, when she was filming Cleopatra in Rome. “But at home she liked a cozy life, friends, good food.”

Children and grandchildren were given the run of the house, as was a succession of dogs, cats, and birds. In recent years nearly every room was awash in blues and lavenders, shades echoing Taylor’s famous violet eyes. And if that chromatic scheme wasn’t in fashion, well, so be it. Elizabeth Taylor’s private world reflected no one better than the woman who lived there—authentic, unapologetic, and full of passion.

TINA SINATRA, daughter of Frank and Nancy Sinatra Sr.: When my mother and I lived [in the house] in the ’60s, it was a contemporary bungalow, with a sort of Hawaiian-California feeling to it. My mother sold it to a developer, and he completely gutted the place and made it a two-story house. And then Elizabeth bought it from him.

DORIS BRYNNER,  friend: It was just a house house, not a showy house, and marvelously casual. Elizabeth’s homes were always full of children, family, and animals.

NAOMI WILDING,* granddaughter:* My grandmother liked having us around, knowing that we were living our lives. She was somebody we could gossip with about boyfriends and subjects we couldn’t discuss with our parents.

SHARON STONE,* actress:* Elizabeth was full of warmth and love, and her home reflected her caring and her embrace of her friends.

WALDO FERNANDEZ, interior designer: When I first came to see her in Bel Air in 1984, Elizabeth was in a beautiful bathing suit, in the pool, using a reflector for her face. She was going to the film festival in Cannes and wanted me to freshen up the house: “I’m coming back in a week and a half, and I want white carpets and white furniture.” I said, “But you have dogs, you have cats!” She had a parrot, too—Alvin. She got what she wanted. White doesn’t stay white for long, though, so we had things cleaned and recovered a lot. Last year, Elizabeth decided she wanted lavender upholstery—she loved purple.

TIM MENDELSON, personal assistant: She lived with paintings by Pissarro, Degas, and Renoir, but wanted people to feel comfortable enough to spill a drink and not freak out. The Trophy Room on the ground floor was where she put photographs of celebrities and royalty. Upstairs was more personal, with photographs of children and grandchildren.

BRUCE WEBER, photographer: I remember when I met Elizabeth Taylor, in the ’90s, she came downstairs in men’s Chinese silk pajamas, sat on the couch and said, “It’s really comfy here, isn’t it?”

FERNANDEZ: Originally I did Elizabeth’s bedroom in hundreds of yards of white Porthault fabric, printed with little purple and yellow flowers. Last year I did it again, all in blue.

BRYNNER: Elizabeth loved flowered cottons. I helped her give her house in Gstaad a face-lift—it was a mountain house, so different from Los Angeles—and I did her bedroom in green and white, with a fabric patterned with green leaves and white peonies.

NICHOLAS WALKER, landscape designer: The garden in L.A. started with Dame Elizabeth telling me, “I’ve been looking all my life to duplicate an authentic English herbaceous border.” Well, Southern California doesn’t have 360 days of rain a year, as England does, but I could create the feeling of what she wanted using plants from all over the world. “If you want delphiniums year-round, I can’t do that,” I told her. “But you can have them in short, truncated moments.” Dame Elizabeth arched an eyebrow and said, “That sounds interesting.”

WEBER: She took pride in her garden, like most English people.

WALKER: Her desire was for color and more color, all the time. “Let’s be bold!” she said. So we built big wood planters—one was about 16 feet long—and used them for annuals. In winter she loved them filled with pansies, from black-violet to variegated yellow.

MENDELSON: Elizabeth used to have Easter-egg hunts every year, and parties in the backyard every Sunday. Her nephew Christopher Taylor lined the pool with aqua tiles, entirely by hand. There was a bronze sculpture of a calf by her daughter Liza Todd Tivey, too. It was a twin of one Liza created for the town square in Gstaad.

VÉRONIQUE PECK,  friend: Elizabeth had a special place in the garden where she would set up a little petting zoo for the children at Easter. It was adorable. Sometimes she would book performers from Cirque du Soleil to do acrobatics outdoors. There was always some wonderful surprise like that.

MENDELSON: Thanksgiving meant 50 people seated around a huge table set up in the living room. She was a serious matriarch.

PECK: Her buffets were wonderful, with lobster and chicken—and always things children would like. She never did anything halfway.

FERNANDEZ: Southern fried chicken was her favorite. Elizabeth was very simple that way. On the other hand, she took forever to get ready. It took three and a half hours to get her out of the house.

CHER, singer and actress: Elizabeth was beyond style as most of us define it! I don’t remember the decor of her house—or what she was wearing when I visited her—I only remember her smile and warmth.

VALENTINO: Once, when I was with her in California and we were discussing the new dresses she wanted, I followed her into her dressing room—there were thousands of shoes. She was like a little girl, and she loved it when people participated.

BRYNNER: Dressing rooms had to be very big, with masses of cupboards, to take all the clothes. The second floor of the house in L.A. was for clothes and jewels.

WILDING: Originally there were four guest rooms, including one upstairs, where I slept. I came to visit once, and it had been turned into a closet! More recently, as the family has grown, we all squished into the house on holidays. I slept on a sofa in the living room a few times. Now we no longer have that gathering space. It was a family house, our house—she made that very clear. My grandmother’s loss is felt deeply. She was the glue that held us together.

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