Elizabeth Taylor has reportedly left her last husband $800,000 in her will. Larry Fortensky was number seven in Taylor's long line of spouses (eight marriages/seven men) and after years of
staying mum on their relationship, the 59-year-old former builder recently opened up to London's Daily Mail.
In a lengthy interview, Fortensky insisted that he was never after Taylor for her money. He reflected on the couple's happy times together and claimed to only be breaking his silence now in an effort to stop the rumors about him being a gold-digger.
"This is nothing to do with money, I have been offered so much over the years," he said. "This is about wanting people to know the real story. I am sick and tired of the lies."
To the public, the two seemed an unlikely match from the get go: he was a construction worker who never finished high school and was 20 years younger, she was among Hollywood's most glamorous, well-known (and well-bejeweled) movie stars.
The pair met during stays in rehab at Betty Ford in 1988 and were married at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch in 1991. The marriage was over by 1996 and Fortensky walked away with $1 million in the divorce settlement, which for Taylor was a drop in the bucket (her worth was recently estimated between $600 million and $1 billion).
Fortensky's health has been ailing ever since he fell down the stairs in 1999 while he was drunk and he's had more than his share of financial troubles since (his house was repossessed last year). Still, he argued that while he accepted money from Taylor over the years, he never asked, not even when they were married.
"I am a proud man and I like to work. I didn't want her money," he said. "I'd get up at 6am to go to the construction site. Elizabeth would get up, put on a kaftan and we'd have breakfast."
With such a financial gulf between them, Fortensky said he never tried to compete with Taylor- the year she gave him a Harley for Christmas, he gave her chocolate covered roses. Warming to the spotlight though was something he could never do.
"Everywhere we went there were cameras," Fortensky recalls. "Elizabeth would put lipstick on constantly because she said she never knew when she was being photographed. I found it hard. It wasn't my cup of tea, those cameras everywhere. Elizabeth was used to it. I never got used to it."
Fortesnky's short-term memory is suffering, but he was able to take the Mail through a highlight reel of his years with Taylor, from the time she threw a fur coat over her nightgown and ran outside to make a snow angel, to how much the two enjoyed riding his Harley along the coast before stopping for burgers at biker bars.
"Of course she was very pretty and I wasn't too bad-looking in those days either. We had an instant physical attraction," Fortensky said. His sister Donna, who lives with him in a town two hours south of Los Angeles, chimed in a little too much on the subject of their sex life.
"She would call Larry her 'stallion.' He loved that," she said. "They were very sexy together. Larry would get up from the table and drag Liz off to the bedroom."
Forstensky said he and Taylor were not only very much in love during their marriage, but that they continued to have an amicable relationship following the divorce. The two spoke on the phone several times each month.
"I love her, I always will. And I know she loved me, too."
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