"Do I look like I'm dying?" - Quoth Elizabeth Taylor

[Sonic Youth]

Wednesday May 31, 1:58 PM
Elizabeth Taylor rejects Alzheimer's reports

AFP


Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor rejected tabloid media reports that she suffers from Alzheimer's disease and denied that she was seriously ill.

"Oh, come on, do I look like I'm dying? Do I look like or sound like I have Alzheimer's?" Taylor, who uses a wheelchair due to back problems, said when asked about the reports in an interview with CNN's "Larry King Live."

"If they want to hear I'm dead, I'm sorry folks, I'm not," the 74-year-old double-Oscar winner said.

American tabloid media recently reported that the star suffered from Alzheimer's, a degenerative brain disease that affects memory, thinking and behavior.

Taylor said she needs a wheelchair due to chronic back problems that she has had since she was a teenager. She added that she was born with scoliosis.

"I don't want to retire. I'm very busy, I love what I'm doing," said Taylor, who has not appeared on screen since 2001 and dedicates herself to jewelry design.

The star of films such as "Cleopatra," "Butterfield 8" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" also renewed her defense of her friend Michael Jackson, who was acquitted on child sex abuse charges last year.

"I've never been so angry in my life" after the accusation surfaced against the "King of Pop," she said.

Taylor said she feels close to Jackson because "we both had horrible childhoods."

Taylor, who first soared to worldwide fame at the age of 12 in "National Velvet," has only rarely appeared in public in recent years.

She now devotes most of her time to her two-decade-old crusade against the scourge of AIDS and HIV.