People fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor in 1944, when she starred in National Velvet—the story of Velvet Brown, a young girl who wins the first place in a famous horse race. At first, the producers of the movie told Taylor that she was too small to play the part of Velvet. However, they waited for her for a few months as she exercised and trained—and added three inches to her height in four months! Her acting in National Velvet is still considered the best by a child actress.
Elizabeth Taylor was born in London, four years after her parents, both Americans, had moved there for business reasons in 1928. When World War II started, the Taylor moved to Beverly Hills, California, and there Elizabeth started acting in movies. After her success as a child star, Taylor had no trouble moving into adult roles and won twice for Best Actress: Butterfield (1960) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? (1966)
Taylor’s fame（名声）and popularity gave her a lot of power with the movie industry, so she was able to demand very high pay for her movies. In 1963, she received $1 million for her part in Cleopatra—the highest pay received by any star up to that time.
Elizabeth Taylor is a legend (传奇人物) of our time. Like Velvet Brown in National Velvet, she has been lucky, she has beauty, fame and wealth. But she is also a hard worker. Taylor seldom acts in movies any more. Instead, she puts her time and efforts into her businesses, and into helping others—several years ago, she founded an organization that has raised more than $40 million for research and education.
The producers didn’t let Taylor play the part of Velvet at first because they thought she ____.

A．was too young

B．was small in size

C．did not play well enough

D．did not show much interest

What Elizabeth Taylor and Velvet Brown had in common was that they were both _____.

A．popular all their lives

B．famous actresses

C．rich and kind-hearted

D．successful when very young

Taylor became Best Actress at the age of     .

A．12

B．28

C．32

D．34

In her later life, Elizabeth Taylor devoted herself to             .

A．turning herself into a legend

B．collecting money for the poor

C．doing business and helping others

D．do research and education work