Elizabeth Taylor’s influence is back in the spotlight | Canada Voices

In a decade of streaming platforms, social media and the pop-culture fluency of Gens Y and Z, entertainment legends are no longer merely rediscovered – they’re reactivated. Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor is one dazzling example. The actor began attracting a new wave of young fans in 2022 with the launch of Elizabeth the First, a Katy Perry-narrated podcast that explored how Taylor reshaped the phenomenon of celebrity itself.

That same year, Taylor’s TikTok account, which is managed by her estate and has amassed over two million likes, posted its first clip. Around the same time, her official website underwent a youthful redesign, becoming one of the only posthumous celebrity digital archives of its kind. The site catalogues more than 20,000 fashion items and accessories from Taylor’s closet, many of which continue to circulate through global auctions – including her 1976 Halston-designed Oscar gown.

This momentum carried into 2024 with HBO’s documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, which unearthed never-before-heard interviews. The latest addition to Taylor’s multiplatform revival is the biographical series Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar, which makes its Canadian debut on Dec. 26 on Hollywood Suite, available through Prime Video.

Together, these offerings are ushering in a new “Liz-abethan” period – defined not by English crowns and Tudor courts but by the enduring queen-ery of an Oscar-winning talent, shrewd entrepreneur, scandal-scarred icon and steadfast HIV/AIDS activist. Known simply as Liz to early fans, her blueprint for stardom – bold, self-directed and years ahead of its time – has been reclaimed by two of the world’s most influential billionaires: Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift.

Swift, whose record-breaking 2025 album Life of a Showgirl includes a song called Elizabeth Taylor, surprised fans by announcing the album’s track list on her now-fiancée Travis Kelce’s podcast days before its release. When Kelce asked his listeners, “Do you know who Elizabeth Taylor is?” Swift locked eyes with the camera and fiercely spat out: “You better.”

The three-and-a-half minute anthem is a pop-tinted, Taylor-on-Taylor character study, with Swift purring lines such as “All my white diamonds and lovers are forever,” along with “They say I’m bad news, I just say, ‘Thanks,’” and “Babe, I’d trade the Cartier for someone to trust … just kidding,” channelling Liz’s signature winking sarcasm.

“She is the perfect star for TikTok. It’s a shame she can’t see how much she’s starting to mean to young people,” said Caroline Sciama, one of the two filmmakers behind Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar.

From the archives: The life and films of Elizabeth Taylor, in pictures

While the series includes pivotal scenes from Taylor’s performances in Giant, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Butterfield 8, its ambition is broader than celebrating her filmography. “For a group of people raised on memes and not MGM, we made this to educate them,” Sciama continued. “And to challenge all the perceptions most of us have of Elizabeth Taylor.”

Backed by a soundtrack featuring Billie Eilish, Lorde and Goldfrapp, the docuseries is co-produced by Kim Kardashian, who appears in all three 45-minute episodes alongside names such as Sharon Stone, Paris Jackson and Taylor’s son, Christopher Wilding. Kardashian also recently went viral for walking in Balenciaga’s Fall 2025 Paris runway show wearing Taylor’s diamond earrings – valued at between approximately US$375,000 and US$650,000.

Her presence in Rebel Superstar functions as a deliberate cultural bridge, linking contemporary celebrity branding to Taylor’s pioneering influence. For some viewers, the connection may feel tenuous, but within the fashion and beauty industries, Taylor’s commercially triumphant White Diamonds perfume is widely recognized as a precursor to Kardashian’s SKIMS-era success. That lineage is one the series repeatedly underscores.

“We’re a generation looking to reappraise women, especially to see them for their power,” Sciama said. “Kim is part of that generation.” Rather than collating viral clips, the filmmakers approached the project as an act of historical curation – proof of how stars reshaped culture “without chasing likes or followers.”

But Winnipeg’s Hannon Bell, one of the world’s foremost collectors of Elizabeth Taylor photography, worries about how younger audiences frame her legacy. “Elizabeth Taylor represents such dignity even when she was written about in tabloids and criticized for her choices,” he said. “When I open up my Facebook page and see posts of AI images manipulating her body and face, it gets me so mad because that’s the opposite of what she was about. She demanded respect and the digital age is so disrespectful.”

Bell has invested more than $200,000 in roughly 20,000 images of Taylor, and even photographed her in New York later in her life. “She was larger than life because she persevered through some doozies – major flops and comebacks on the big screen, as well as a rocky home life,” he said.

Sciama notes that Rebel Superstar aims to explain, not exploit, Taylor’s highs and lows. “I didn’t know about Elizabeth’s advocacy or what she did in her later life before I started this job,” she said. “I didn’t know how she fought against a male-dominated industry and system.”

Taylor was famously the first actor to demand – and receive – a million-dollar salary for her role in 1963’s Cleopatra, and the second celebrity to successfully expand her personal brand through fragrance (Sophia Loren was the first). “We wanted all the relevance she’s got today, and how she was more than just a beauty, a star, or just a woman known for having eight husbands,” Sciama added.

Co-director James House first discovered Taylor at age 13 in the 1994 film version of The Flintstones, in which she plays Pearl Slaghoople. His appreciation deepened as he learned more about her personal convictions. “We wanted to do away with the caricature of Liz,” he said. “She probably wouldn’t describe herself as a feminist or sex-positive, but she was.”

House emphasizes Taylor’s outspoken support of gay men during the AIDS crisis, including her fury at institutional neglect, citing a 1992 interview on The Whoopi Goldberg Show in which she said that “without homosexuals there would be no Hollywood, no show business!” as well as her acceptance speech for the Vanguard Award at the 2000 GLAAD Media Awards, when she declared, “There is no gay agenda, it’s a human agenda.”

Canadian-American actress, podcaster and author Rory Uphold also credits Taylor as a defining cultural influence. Her 2025 book, The Final Girl’s Guide to the Horrors of Dating, draws inspiration from Taylor’s endurance. Uphold describes Taylor as the ultimate Final Girl – referring to the trope of the last female standing in horror films – who adapts, survives and outlasts relentless odds. “Elizabeth Taylor was objectively stunning, and yet her looks were probably the least remarkable thing about her,” Uphold said.

Quoting Taylor’s line, “I’ve always been very aware of the inner me that has nothing to do with the physical me,” Uphold adds: “She not only survived personal and professional ‘horrors,’ she thrived. And I believe that is what this generation is drawn to.”