Burton and Taylor

I cannot wait to watch tonight's  ‘Burton and Taylor,’ the 90-minute BBC4 TV biopic documenting the final reunion between the glamorous Cleopatra co-stars Richard Burtonand Elizabeth Taylor, depicted by Dominic West and TLC’s favourite luvvvie Helena Bonham-Carter.

Known for their particularly turbulent relationship, this drama focuses on when the couple, who were married and divorced to each other twice, performed together, disastrously and for the final time, in the 1983 critically-slated Broadway revival of Nöel Coward’s ‘Private Lives.’  Despite being in different relationships at this time, Liz and Dick’s on-going, mutually obsessive, alcohol-fuelled love you/loathe you, can’t live with you/can’t live without you lovelife saw an exhausted Liz check in to the Betty Ford clinic straight after the show closed. Writer William Ivory understood the his two star protaganists well, "Burton and Taylor were addicted to more than alcohol… they were addicted to each other.” 

 Elizabeth received Richard’s final love letter to her later that year, three days before he died.  The letter was buried with the iconic actress when she passed away in 2011. 

'Burton and Taylor' is on tonight at 9PM, BBC4.

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Coolest Couple Award at this year's 70th annual Golden Globes?  Without doubt, Helena Bonham-Carter and Tim Burton!  Unconventional, individual and  HOW much do I LOVE  Helena's Lulu Guinness red perspex Lips Clutch?  LOTS. Available here, RRP. £245.00).

The First Actresses - Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons

I recently went to see ‘The First Actresses - Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons’ at The National Portrait Gallery, where more than 50 portraits of actresses take centre stage in a vivid spectacle of femininity, fashion and theatricality in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Britain.

Women were first permitted to perform on the English stage in the early 1660’s, after the restoration of Charles II, and this exhibition reveals the many ways in which these notorious, glamorous performers became early celebrities and fashion icons, shrewdly using portraiture to enhance their reputations, deflect scandal and increase their popularity.

Portraits of everyone's favourite Restoration pin up girl, the ‘pretty witty’ Nell Gwyn (with her varying, revealing ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ on display - above, both by Simon Verelst) alongside Moll Davis, Kitty Clive, Hester Booth, Lavinia Fenton, Elizabeth Linley, Sarah Siddons, Mary Robinson and Dorothy Jordan are exhibited.

What makes this exhibition really fascinating is the focus on the social history of the time and the biographies of the ladies which really does keep your interest from the first painting through to the last. With some early actresses becoming mistresses of Kings and aristocrats and with Covent Garden being just as famous for its brothels as it was for its theatres, the struggle which these women were up against was profound and you really leave admiring these theatrical pioneers.

Touchingly, to complement this exhibition, in a nearby exhibition entitled ‘The Actress Now’ displays a cacophony of portraits featuring contemporary actresses, ranging from Dame Judi Dench to Helena Bonham Carter (left, by Trevor Leighton) and Keira Knightley, who all owe a great debt to their predecessors in the next-door room.

Exhibition on at The National Portrait Gallery
until 8 January 2012