Taylor gives up final bow because of war

Retiring actress Elizabeth Taylor abandoned her swan song because of the war.

The veteran actress had billed Sunday’s Oscar appearance as her formal farewell to Hollywood, but because of the war in Iraq, Taylor chose to sit out.

Taylor, a two-time Oscar winner, was to have joined 59 other past acting honorees in an anniversary-minded reunion at the 75th Academy Awards. Taylor’s representative said the screen goddess had been looking forward to the show, but RSVP’d her regrets to the Academy after war was launched in Iraq.

“She just said it was disrespectful to the people out there losing their lives fighting,” publicist Sally Morrison told reporters.

The actress, however, did watch the telecast at her home, Morrison said. Taylor believed the matter of whether to go or not to go “was up to people’s individual choice,” Morrison said. “But for her, she just couldn’t live with herself to do it.”

Last week, the 71-year-old legend said she planned to use the Oscar telecast to mark her “swan song from the stage”.

“I’ve retired from acting, it doesn’t really interest me that much anymore,” Taylor, who last appeared on the big screen in 1994’s The Flintstones, told Access Hollywood. “It seems kind of superficial because now my life is AIDS [activism], not acting.”

Where Taylor and her whereabouts are concerned, health is always a top concern. But according to her camp, health had nothing to do with her decision stay home Sunday. Said Morrison: “She’s absolutely fine.”

And Taylor was far from the only living Academy Award-winning actor or actress to skip Sunday’s onstage alumni meeting.

Angelina Jolie, a scheduled presenter and Best Supporting Actress winner for 1999’s Girl, interrupted, was a last-minute withdrawal, Paul Newman (Class of 1986, Best Actor, The Colour Of Money) was a long-planned no-show, despite the additional enticement of a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Road To Perdition. Liza Minnelli (Class of 1972, Best Actress, Cabaret) was on holiday and other notable no-shows included two-time winners Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Jodie Foster, Maggie Smith and Kevin Spacey.