Though she never gave up diamonds and dressing gowns, her larger than life persona expanded to include significant largess. She was a very early and very public champion for HIV/AIDS research, but she had a lesser known pet cause that brought her into the purview of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where she served on the board of trustees and eventually received the center's highest honor, the Humanitarian Award in 1980. Taylor also served as a narrator for the center's first documentary film, "Genocide," about the Holocaust, and the center credits her participation with attracting Orson Welles as co-narrator. The film went on to win an Oscar.
Her Oscar drought ended in 1960 when she brought home the coveted statue for her flawless performers in Butterflied 8 (1960) as Gloria Wondrous, a call girl who is involved with a married man. Some critics blasted the movie but they couldn't ignore her performance. There were no more films for Elizabeth for three years.
She left MGM after her contract ran out, but would do projects for the studio later down the road. In 1963 she starred in Cleopatra (1963), which was one of the most expensive productions up to that time as was her salary, a whopping $1,00,000. Elizabeth was to return to fine form, however, with the role of Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Her performance as the loudmouthed, shrewish, unkempt Martha was easily her finest to date and won her a second Oscar.
As Cleopatra, she was the natural fit to star in a film with the rare distinction of having nearly bankrupted a studio. According to IMDB , the $194,800 budget for Taylor's costumes in the film was the highest ever for a single actor. It paid for 65 costumes, including one dress made from 24-carat gold cloth. When she posed for her first Life Magazine cover in 1948, according to a lovely story written by Emma Forrest for the Telegraph, the photographer Phillipe Halsman asked her what color she wanted her dress to be: "The color of money," Taylor famously replied.
