Elizabeth Taylor was one of the first celebrities at the frontline of the fight against AIDS: she lobbied the notoriously indifferent Reagan Administration to tackle the problem, stood by her friend Rock Husdon during his battle with HIV/AIDS and, after his death, co-founded the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). That’s the organisation Miley Cyrus recently raised $69,000 for after vowing to clean someone’s house naked.
But that’s far from all Elizabeth did. As her protégée, model Kathy Ireland, recently revealed that Elizabeth supplied experimental HIV drugs to treat patients on the low. She even sold her jewellery to fund the operation.
“Talk about fearless,” Kathy Ireland said, “her home in Bel-Air, it was a safe house. A lot of the work that she did, it was illegal, but she was saving lives. She said her business associates pleaded with her: ‘leave this thing alone.’ She received death threats. Friends hung up on her when she asked for help, but something that I love about Elizabeth is her courage.”
Apparently, the academy award winner and general bad bitch was happy to risk getting caught. “She’d go to jail for it,” Kathy wagered.
Because the US the government at the time were slow to approve treatment drugs, underground services like Elizabeth’s-who distributed drugs imported from other countries-were crucial in saving lives at the time.