Just look at that face!

There’s a photo of me, at around 16, sitting on the front stoop at my house in Queens. It’s summer and I’m wearing matching gold Bermuda shorts and a sleeveless top. I would scan the photo for you to see, but I have no idea where it is now. The reason I bring it up in the first place is because most anyone who saw it thought I looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor. Of course, I didn’t think so at all, but it made me happy when someone said it.

I loved watching “National Velvet” when I was a young girl. Elizabeth was so beautiful and happy. I wanted to be her.

I saw Cleopatra with my family the night before they dropped me at Syracuse University to start my freshman year. I wanted to be Elizabeth then, too. It would have been preferable to being left behind at Syracuse.

I saw Elizabeth on Broadway in Edward Albee’s psychological play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Richard Burton played her husband. I wanted to be Elizabeth more than ever.

One of my all-time fave movies was the epic, “Giant.” If I couldn’t be Elizabeth, my life was a waste.

When Mike Todd died in a plane crash, I was 11, and was deeply sad for Elizabeth. I thought about it so much you’d think I lost someone close to me.

When Eddie Fisher left wife, Debbie Reynolds, I felt bad for her, but who could blame the guy? Once you fell under Elizabeth’s spell, you were destined to stay that way.

Sure, Elizabeth was a little nuts, married eight times, battled drug addiction, best friends with Michael Jackson.  You’ve heard it all. But she never lost her innate grace or her self-awareness. “I’ve always admitted that I’m ruled by my passions,” she said. That’s precisely what made her so captivating, on and off the screen.

She was only 79, but she looked older at the end. “She lived hard,” Lina said. Yes, she certainly did.