An outsize figure both in life and in the years since her death in 2011, at age 79, Taylor invited only the rare few behind her glamorous facade. “The woman I knew was not Elizabeth Taylor, the movie star; she was simply a wonderful, fun, silly, and caring grandmother,” says Quinn Tivey, one of Taylor’s grandsons and a co-trustee of her estate, who served as an executive producer on the film. “I remember watching movies with her in bed, chatting about dating advice, and just hanging out with a very cool person.” Tivey, the son of Liza Todd, Taylor’s daughter with her third husband, Mike Todd, viewed the lost conversations as a key to the woman behind the legend. “I see the ways that she protected the difference between Elizabeth Taylor, the brand name, and Elizabeth Taylor, the person, and she talks about this in the documentary to great effect,” he says.
Taylor, whose tumultuous personal life included being married eight times—twice to Richard Burton—and losing one husband, the aforementioned Todd, in a tragic plane crash, was a source of tabloid fodder for much of her life. Where some wilted in the face of so much public scrutiny, however, Taylor soldiered bravely on. “She was true to herself, she was bold, she was courageous, and she had been through such highs and lows, living such a complete and complex life,” Tivey says.