Elizabeth Taylor's beauty was breathtaking.

There's a moment the 1951 film A Place in the Sun where Angela, the seductress Taylor played, approaches George (Montgomery Clift) in a pool room. There's a pause, she looks up, the camera frames her face and it's like staring at the sun.

Even watching the clip again on a grainy video, Taylor looks like a modern day Venus de Milo with a face that could have been carved out of porcelain. Watching her quivering bottom lip as she bats her considerable eyelashes and whispers, "Are you blue?" it's amazing Montgomery Clift was able to remain standing.

With such a long and accomplished career, it seems superficial to focus on Taylor's beauty. But part of why we go sit in the dark and stare at the silver screen is to dream of something bigger and better than ourselves. And in the realm of film fantasies, no one could hold a candle to Elizabeth Taylor. She was and always will be film glamour.

Which makes her transformation in 1966's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf all the more stunning. Try to imagine a real-life Hollywood couple today, taking on this bawdy and bold tale about a middle-aged married couple tearing each other to pieces. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were the Brangelina of their time, but Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie never attempted anything as daring as this.

Taylor shredded her movie star image for the part, putting on weight and mussing her famous face. In the film she prowls around the drab living room as Martha, her face looming, leering at the camera, snarling that "Georgie Boy didn't have the stuff."

Another unforgettable role from an actress who shined on screen and off.