WATCH: Paul Newman Called Elizabeth Taylor ‘a Helluva Actress’

People.com
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Superstar to superstar. To Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor was “a functioning voluptuary … a courageous survivor, a helluva actress and someone I am extremely proud to know.”

Even in the sanitized 1958 MGM version of Tennessee Williams’s potent drama in which they costarred, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – with the sultry Newman as the drunkard ex-athlete Brick and an indelible Taylor as his neglected wife, Maggie the Cat – the two sent audiences’ pulses racing. But they were more than simply sex symbols. Both proved themselves Academy Award-level actors and world-class humanitarians.

Now, sadly, they are both gone. Newman died at age 83, in 2008, and Taylor, at 79, early Wednesday morning.

Fortunately, their performances remain – as does a tribute Newman paid Taylor on behalf of Turner Classic Movies. (See the video below.)

“What can you say about a legend?” Newman muses at the beginning of the four-minute video love letter. Acknowledging but not dwelling upon her remarkable violent eyes or stunning beauty, Newman instead concentrates on her screen presence, “her volatility, her sense of truth.”