Taylor and George Segal in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966 — Everett Collection
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Everything about director Mike Nichols' adaptation of Edward Albee's play about a marriage crashing spectacularly on the rocks is daring — the shaky black-and-white photography gives the film the immediacy of a documentary; the unforgiving closeups seem to give us a view straight into the characters' souls. But perhaps the most daring achievement of all is Taylor's raw nerve of a performance. In one scene — you remember it, the one when she verbally castrates her quaking husband (Richard Burton) before the horrified eyes of their young visitors (George Segal and Sandy Dennis) — Taylor reclaims her place as the Great Movie Star Who Is Also a Great Movie Actress. She won her second Oscar for Virginia Woolf, and there are some who say she should have stopped right there. But she was in love with Burton, and from then on they collaborated in a series of films that were often interesting, when they weren't just plain bad.
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