Date Published: 03/22/11

Actress Elizabeth Taylor is dead

Elizabeth Taylor

Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor has died in Los Angeles. She was 79.

Publicist Sally Morrison says the actress died Wednesday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from congestive heart failure. Morrison says her children were at her side.

She'd been hospitalized for about six weeks.

Taylor first gained stardom as a child and appeared in more than 50 films. She won Oscars for her performances in "Butterfield 8" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

She was equally famous for extraordinary beauty and her stormy personal life, including eight marriages and a series of physical ailments.

In later years, she was a spokeswoman for humanitarian causes, notably AIDS research. That work gained her a special Oscar in 1993.

AP