Lohan's Liz Taylor performance savaged by critics

The American actress Lindsay Lohan has managed to stay out of court long enough to make a TV movie which the producers say is a biography of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. “Liz & Dick” marks Lohan’s highly anticipated return to work after several brushes with the law. Alongside her, the legendary Richard Burton is played by the New Zealand-born actor Grant Bowler. The film had its premiere in Beverly Hills where Lindsay Lohan talked about the parallels between Liz Taylor’s life and her own. “I think we have a lot of similarities,” she said, “she grew up with her mom mostly and so have I, and also living your life in the public, I think that’s the main one. I look to her because she went through it.” Taylor and Burton married each other twice and for nearly a quarter of a century they were seldom out of the news. Their professional and personal lives made them Hollywood royalty. The highest paid actor in Tinseltown, the glamour of Elizabeth Taylor, the world’s first million dollar diamond as a gift, the heavy drinking, the fiery on-off romance all combined to keep the couple a favourite of newspaper editors around the world. Often called “the marriage of the century”, it was the most notorious, publicised and celebrated love affair of its day. Bowler said: “I think Burton’s highly underrated by today’s standards. Often Liz Taylor as an actress because of their relationship kind of overwhelms him but you know the man was one of the finest stage actors ever to come off the English stage and was nominated for seven Academy Awards. So, that’s pretty good.” The critics have mauled Lohan’s performance. The Hollywood Reporter called it “woeful from start to finish” and “an instant classic of unintentional hilarity.” The reviewer went on: “Drinking games were made for movies like this.” “Liz and Dick” is being broadcast on the American cable channel Lifetime TV.