The Man Who Was Rumored to Be Engaged to Elizabeth Taylor but “Blew It”

 

Elizabeth Taylor's photographer, Firoz Zahedi, released a beautiful book called My Elizabeth, showcasing his work capturing the famous Hollywood actress over the years. The pair first met in 1976, when he was just 27 and she was 44. As their friendship grew, a rumor spread that they were going to get married – not unusual for a woman who had been married eight times. By this time, they were 57 and 74 years old respectively, and Zahedi did not want his reputation to be tainted by the rumor. However, it was Taylor who ultimately told him that he "blew it."

In 2006, tabloids spread rumors that Zahedi and Taylor were engaged. "I don't know how it happened," Zahedi explained to People magazine in 2016, reflecting on that time in his life. "I was taking my mom to a doctor in Virginia, and my agent in L.A. called me and said, 'All the magazines are saying about you that you're marrying Elizabeth Taylor.' 'I thought at first he was playing a joke on me so I hung up the phone and [then] I was laughing at it.'

The rumor spread so much that when Zahedi next spoke to Taylor, she too had heard about their alleged engagement. "I called Elizabeth, and I said, 'So I heard we're getting married.' And he said, 'Yeah, I heard the same thing.' I responded, 'So when's it going to happen?'" While he was able to joke about it at first, Zahedi said the rumor began to bother him.

As time passed and the rumor became more widespread, Zahedi became more concerned about how it would affect Taylor. His main concern was that he didn't want it to embarrass her, and he especially didn't want her to think that he was the one who started it in the first place. Without knowing where it actually came from, it would be easy to point the finger at it.

"I called Elizabeth's publicist and I told her, 'You have to do something about this.' And he laughed and said, 'We've already got a quarter of a million dollars for the wedding photos.'" Despite all the jokes, Zahedi was insistent. “I kept insisting that they do something about it. I was trying to reach Elizabeth and couldn't get through and I was wondering, 'Is she really that upset about this? What's going on?' The next thing I read was a quote from Elizabeth in which she said, 'No, Firoz and I are good friends. There was never any romance between us.

“We have never been, have never been, and never will be romantically involved,” their statement read. My personal life and my plans remain private at this time.” However, it called Zahedi "an old and dear friend".

Following the release of his statement, Zahedi had difficulty getting over Taylor. As it turned out, she was quite upset by the way he had so strongly denied the rumor of her possible engagement. "I kept trying to reach Elizabeth to discuss it, and finally she got through to me, and I said, 'I'm so sorry about all this – because the older actresses, the younger the older society women. There's always ridicule for going out with a boy." ,'' he explained to her.

Her answer really opened his eyes and changed his way of thinking. "She said, 'What's wrong with me marrying someone younger than me?' This thought suddenly came to my mind. What's wrong with an older woman marrying a younger man? So we made up and I came back to LA and we resumed our friendship as it was. was before.'