Written by Craig Campbell
AS a child with genetic mutations who terrified grown-ups, some might have believed the film studios when they said Elizabeth Taylor would never be a star.
She got her first movie role at the grand old age of nine, a tiny role in There's One Born Every Minute, but her contract was swiftly terminated.
The casting director of Universal clearly disliked the young girl, saying: "The kid has nothing. Her eyes are too old, and she doesn't have the face of a child."
It was those incredible eyes that had got her parents interested in putting her up for movies in the first place.
Born with a most odd mutation that meant she had two pairs of eyelashes, strangers had been telling the young Elizabeth and her mum and dad to get her a screen test.
"Apparently," Liz would say once she was a global superstar, one of the planet's most famous ladies, "I used to frighten grown-ups because I was totally direct."
She would spend the next 61 years, an incredible career at the top, demonstrating how, actually, we couldn't get enough of her, including those amazing eyes.