Stars: May 2007 Archives

In looking over the extensive photos posted on JustJared.com of a very glamorous Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie at the Cannes Film Festival this week, I was excited to see a pair of real movie stars who are in love and cause a real commotion wherever they go around the world. If you turned back the clock 40 years, you could just as easily be talking about jet-setting movie stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the couple basically responsible for the creation of the paprazzi. There are many similarities between the two couples: Taylor and Burton caused a scandal when they fell in love during the shooting of "Cleopatra" since both were married to others at the time while Brad and Angelina fell in love while making "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" while he was married to Jennifer Aniston; Taylor was already an Oscar winner when she met Burton as was Jolie when she got together with Pitt; Taylor and Burton adopted their daughter, Maria Burton, early in their relationship (both had children from previous marriages) while the Pitt-Jolie brood includes four children.


What remains up in the air is whether their love will stand the test of time. It's been less than three years of togetherness for Jolie and Pitt. Taylor and Burton had already been together for two years when they married in 1964. They made many movies together, most noteably 1966's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", before divorcing in 1974. They remarried in 1975 but split again, for good, less than a year later. Still, their love remained even when married to others. They reunited, professionally, for the Broadway play "Private Lives" in 1983 which despite bad reviews, broke house records. When Burton died in 1984, Taylor was devastated and to this day, considers him and her late husband Mike Todd the two loves of her life.