Top 10 Perpetual Divorcés

Elizabeth Taylor has had eight marriages but only seven husbands. Her lineup started in 1950 with Conrad Hilton, hotel magnate and grandfather of the infamous Paris and Nicole. Then came English actor Michael Wilding, American film producer Michael Todd (who died in a plane crash just one year later), American singer Eddie Fisher and the love — and unlove — of her life, Richard Burton.

Taylor and Burton began a highly publicized affair on the set of Cleopatra in 1961, even though both were married at the time. They wed in 1964, just days after Taylor's divorce from Fisher was finalized. "I wouldn't stand in the way of this earth-shattering, world-shaking romance for anything in the world," a spurned Fisher told TIME on the eve of their wedding. Taylor and Burton stayed together for 10 years, but the leading man's drinking and womanizing got the best of him, and in 1974 they divorced. They remarried in Botswana 16 months later, only to divorce less than a year after that. Taylor married twice after Burton: to future U.S. Senator John Warner, and then to Larry Fortensky, a construction worker whom she wed at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. Recent rumors about a possible ninth marriage, to her manager Richard Winters, seem to be unfounded — the 78-year-old star denied them via Twitter.

See LIFE photos of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's wedding day.