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Tag: Richard Burton

  • Tippi Hedren Mourns Passing of ‘The Birds’ Costar Rod Taylor

    Tippi Hedren starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film The Birds alongside critically acclaimed actor Rod Taylor. Taylor died on Wednesday evening of a heart attack. He was 84.

    In addition to The Birds, Rod Taylor starred in more than 50 Hollywood films throughout his career. In addition to starring with Tippi Hedren, he appeared on the big screen opposite a number of other Hollywood icons, including Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Jane Fonda.

    In a statement to People magazine, Tippi Hedren made it quite clear that Rod Taylor was more than just a costar. He was her dear friend.

    “There are so many incredible feelings I have for him. Rod was a great pal to me and a real strength, we were very, very good friends,” Hedren, who is 84, said.

    “He was one of the most fun people I have ever met, thoughtful and classy, there was everything good in that man,” she added.

    Rod Taylor’s family is mourning their loss. He was married to wife Carol for 35 years. He is also survived by his daughter Felicia.

    “My dad loved his work. Being an actor was his passion–calling it an honorable art and something he couldn’t live without,” she told People. “He once said, ‘I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist, so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them.’”

    Tippi Hedren, the mother of actress Melanie Griffith, is no doubt just one of many in Hollywood who join Rod Taylor’s family in mourning his passing.

  • Sophia Loren to Publish Memoir of Her Life, Finally

    Sophia Loren is finally ready to tell the story of her life. And like any legendary Hollywood actress, she has quite a story to tell.

    The Oscar-winning Italian actress will publish the memoir, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale, in a deal with Atria Books, which announced the release date of the book for Dec. 2, 2014, on Thursday.

    Despite the title of her memoir, the 79-year-old actress told Vanity Fair in 2012, “My life is not a fairy tale, and it’s painful still to speak about it.”

    The legendary star will likely include the details of her rise from poverty during World War II to international stardom.

    “Her long awaited memoir gives her many fans a glimpse of the woman who has left her mark on an era — from the challenges of growing up poor and hungry in wartime Italy to the flowering of her career and the joys of being a mother and grandmother,” said the publishing company in a statement.

    The sex symbol will also share the details of her love life with some incredibly interesting men of their own accord, Cary Grant, Richard Burton and her husband, Carlo Ponti, among others.

    Writer John Cheever, who interviewed Loren in Naples in 1967 for The Saturday Evening Post, did a wonderful job of summing up the persona of Loren.

    “Here is the actress; the slum child; the chatelaine of a great villa; the beauty whose pictures, cut from magazine covers, lonely men carry around in their wallets; and the wife of Carlo Ponti. She brings all this into focus with a shake of her head She seems sincere, magnanimous, lucky, intelligent, and serene,” wrote Cheever.

    Journalist Pete Hamill, who visited her in Naples on the set of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, from which she bases the title of her memoir, wrote about the beauty.

    “Her nose is too large, her chin too small. Her feet are the biggest of any movie queen since Greta Garbo. But head her in the direction of a camera, set her Etruscan eyes dancing, and Sophia is one of the most magnificent women in the world,” wrote Hamill.

    Loren‘s movies include Marriage Italian Style, Houseboat and Two Women, which earned her an Academy Award in 1961.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons