Kim Kardashian: Elizabeth Taylor inspired me

“I was always drawn to Elizabeth Taylor,” says Kim Kardashian.

The media personality was the last person to have a published interview with Taylor before she died in 2011. The interview – for Harper’s Bazaar magazine – featured a photoshoot inspired by the star’s famous role in the 1963 movie Cleopatra.

“We were actually supposed to meet up for tea at her house, and then she fell ill,” Kardashian says.

Instead, the pair arranged to speak over the phone. What struck her, she remembers, was Taylor’s approach to life.

“We were talking about fighting for people,” Kardashian says. “She understood her power and her beauty.”

Taylor’s life – from her Oscar wins to her seven husbands – is explored in new BBC documentary series Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar.

Kardashian – who has more than 360 million followers on Instagram after first rising to fame on reality TV series Keeping Up With the Kardashians – serves as an executive producer on the series and explains how the movie star inspired her.

“There’s so many young people I want to remind or even teach them about who she is,” she says.

Kardashian wants to “ensure” Taylor’s legacy continues.

Taylor, born in 1932, was in the public eye for most of her life. She moved from England to Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, when she was seven – and had her first hit film with National Velvet at the age of 12.

She went on to be the first actress to sign a million dollar contract for a single film, for Cleopatra, and her romantic relationship with co-star Richard Burton sparked a paparazzi frenzy.

“She was very honest about her love life and she would obviously fall in and out of love,” Kardashian says, adding “she loved love”.

Taylor’s eight marriages – she married Welsh actor Burton twice – were heavily publicised.

And in the 1980s, the star would go on to use her spotlight to campaign for Aids patients.

“What really moved me [is] how she would fight for people that were voiceless, and how she was so passionate about it,” Kardashian says.

In 1985, Taylor helped found the American Foundation for Aids Research (amfAR), a month before her close friend Rock Hudson died from an Aids-related illness.

She was instrumental in getting US president Ronald Reagan to speak at a dinner for the organisation after years of mostly avoiding the topic – and she sold the exclusive photos from her eighth wedding to start the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation in 1991.

Kardashian says Taylor’s involvement in Aids activism, at a time when few celebrities spoke up, is “completely inspiring”.

“The main thing is that she just did not care,” Kardashian says, “the scrutiny was worth the help that she was able to accomplish.”

She adds that Taylor is someone she would “look to” when approaching her prison reform advocacy. In 2018, she met with Donald Trump to discuss the topic and lobbied the White House for the release of Alice Johnson, a great-grandmother jailed for two decades. And in April, she met Kamala Harris to discuss pardons issued by President Joe Biden.

“I know that when I do prison reform work and people think it’s too, maybe, crazy of a topic to really get involved in, you just think of her.”

Kardashian had other connections to the Hollywood star, too.

“I would always hear a lot about Elizabeth Taylor,” Kardashian says, explaining she once dated a nephew of Michael Jackson and recalls seeing “beautiful paintings” of Taylor in the singer’s home (Jackson and Taylor were close friends).

Kardashian also remembers Taylor gifting her a bottle of her signature White Diamonds perfume. “I will cherish that forever,” she says, adding her famous jewellery collection inspired her too.

Some of the items in her collection were named after her relationships, like the Mike Todd tiara and the Taylor-Burton diamond.

“I just thought that was so fun and inspiring,” Kardashian says. “There was a time when I stopped wearing jewellery for a while and then I think of her, she was so unapologetically herself, and I just love that.”

She says she is excited for people to see the documentary series.

“My sisters want to watch it, my mom and my grandma. So that makes me really proud. When every generation wants to see it.

“I just really want people to understand that she was everything: she could be the glamorous actress, she could be having a hard time and going through health issues and then she can also be the strongest activist.”

You can watch Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar on BBC iPlayer.