Liz Taylor in hospital with congestive heart failure

The London-born actress Elizabeth Taylor, star of National Velvet, Cleopatra and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof among many other memorable movies, has been admitted to Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles to be treated for congestive heart failure.

At 78, she has a history of health problems, and was reported last March to have told friends that she felt "too tired and weak" to go under the surgeon's knife again. She once said: "I enter hospitals as often as others enter taxi cabs."

She has recently been confined to a wheelchair, suffering from Scoliosis, a painful curvature of the spine. She has been treated before for congestive heart failure, in 2009, and has also had to battle a brain tumour, diabetes, and a stroke.

In recent years, Liz Taylor has been best known in the media for her friendship with the late Michael Jackson and for her Aids foundation.

But in her prime, she was considered one of the most beautiful and successful screen actresses in the world. She has been married eight times, twice to her great lover and fellow screen star Richard Burton, with whom she made seven films in the 1960s, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The V.I.P.s and The Taming of the Shrew.

She won the best actress Oscar twice in that same decade - for Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The last time she was seen publicly in London was when she turned out to attend a concert given last year at the O2 Arena by her great friend - and fellow Dame - Julie Andrews.

Meeting backstage in The Sound of Music star's dressing-room, Dame Julie is reported to have said: "May I say how marvellous you are looking?" To which Dame Liz replied: "Marvellous? Look at me. I am falling apart." ·