document: Her movies now are few and far between , but when she is ill , the world still stands at attention . Liz Taylor 's latest bout with pneumonia has drawn the kind of intense scrutiny normally accorded presidential polyps . It has inspired a raft of rumors and handed up a field day for the giddy tabloids . And today , yet again , everyone is talking about La Liz . But then Liz Taylor , 58 , has always lived a life of extremes . If she has enjoyed the most brilliant career and the glare of fame , she has also survived seven rocky marriages to six men , the frailest health and the most frightening bouts with addiction to booze , drugs and food . And through it all , there have been armies of press recording each divorce , each hospital stay . It was partly to still the gossips that Taylor 's doctors called a press conference Wednesday at St. John 's Hospital and Medical Center in Santa Monica . No AIDS , they said . No cancer . For the tabloid press had been humming with rumors that Liz Taylor had AIDS virtually since she was checked into Daniel Freeman Hospital in Marina del Rey April 9 with a high fever and sinus infection . And when Taylor 's publicists first issued flat denials , the press went on to speculate about the speculation . Did the AIDS rumors start because of Taylor 's ballyhooed friendship with publishing titan Malcolm Forbes , whose recent death touched off reports about his alleged homosexuality ? Or was it because of her reputation as a major fund-raiser for the disease ? Or because one of her doctors , Michael Roth , was a renowned AIDS specialist -- even though Roth was supervising her treatment for drug and alcohol addiction as early as 1983 ? `` Liz is a national treasure and when she entered the hospital , I thought it was as important as the President of the U.S. going in and we treated it as such . Liz is as close to American royalty as you can have , and our readers ... in the heartland ... they 're living and dying with her , '' said Barry Levine , Hollywood bureau chief of the Star , which featured a cover photograph of Liz , hooked up to an intravenous tube and oxygen mask , being transferred from the Marina del Rey hospital to St. John 's . Levine declined comment on a rumor circulating among reporters that the tabloid had paid $ 50,000 for the pictures . Some press coverage has bent over backwards to tug at the bounds of credibility ; the National Enquirer has Liz communing with the ghosts of Forbes and one-time husband Richard Burton . In all , Liz 's current illness has drawn the most attention yet , according to her publicist , Chen Sam . More than 100 reporters , photographers and cameramen converged on St. John 's , many of whom had flown in from around the country for the 15-minute press conference . Behind a chorus line of video cameras -- representing the major networks , the local stations , CNN and the tabloid shows -- reporters peppered the doctors with pointed and sometimes testy questions about Taylor 's treatment and drug use . `` I heard some guys talking behind me , saying , ' I ca n't believe they 're hounding her like this . ' I felt like saying , ` Are you offended reading about her ? ' '' sniffed Val Richardson , a reporter from the Washington Times who 'd flown in that morning . At any rate , the news was good . Taylor was off a respirator and breathing with the help of an oxygen mask . She had apparently rebounded from a bad weekend , when doctors feared she might die . Although Taylor 's physicians are still trying to identify the virus , they are treating her for pneumonia with antibiotics . And she remains in the intensive-care unit , but she continues to improve and is expected to move to a regular room this weekend , Sam said Thursday . Meanwhile , her own security guards keep watch over her private room in intensive care . She has received her four children -- Christopher and Michael Wilding , Maria Burton-Carson and Liza Todd-Tivey -- friends Roddy McDowall and Carole Bayer Sager and Liz 's younger , ex-trucker boyfriend , Larry Lee Fortensky , 38 . `` I saw her yesterday and I was really pleased , '' Sager said Wednesday . `` I thought her color was good . She could n't speak because she had the respirator . Her eyes were clear and she definitely understood what I said and motioned , made me know she understood . '' If Liz 's public is fascinated by her frailties , perhaps reassured somehow by the knowledge that even the gods are vulnerable , their interest is also piqued by the public face she puts on her relentless brushes with illness and addiction . The Taylor wit shone through even Wednesday 's press conference , when doctors passed on the actress ' desire to `` come out and wave at you , but she was n't in her balcony attire . '' `` I think she 's extraordinarily brave , '' Sager said . `` She just has an enormous reservoir of inner strength that she calls on when she has to . All of us were encouraged and optimistic . '' She has needed it . Taylor 's respiratory ailments alone have been a recurring problem . Bronchitis and laryngitis brought down the curtain on numerous performances of `` The Little Foxes , '' which Taylor starred in on Broadway in 1981 , and Noel Coward 's `` Private Lives , '' which toured the country in 1983 . The cancellations prompted the play 's co-producer , Zev Bufman , to declare , `` Bronchitis has plagued Elizabeth all her life . '' In fact , Taylor has been plagued by health woes ever since her 1945 film debut in `` National Velvet '' ; her fall from a horse triggered a lifetime of back trouble . And when Taylor retired from films to marry the Republican senator from Virginia , John Warner , her well-being continued to make headlines ; she choked on a chicken bone and wrenched her back after slipping on a carpet at a reception honoring former President Gerald R. Ford . Over the years she has endured about 20 major operations on her back , appendix , eyes and teeth ; when the Asian flu threatened Taylor 's life , doctors made a hole in her throat so she could breathe . But it has been her wrestling matches with weight and addiction that have consistently lured the world 's curiosity and , at times , admiration . Taylor 's unhappy stint as a politician 's wife prompted her weight to balloon to 180 pounds . When she emerged a born-again beauty in 1985 after shedding 60 pounds , and wrote a beauty book to boot , she was applauded by many -- including comedian Joan Rivers , who had made fat-Liz jokes the mainstay of her act . `` For somebody like me who is obsessive , it 's amazing I was never a gambler , '' she said at the time . `` I could have become anorexic . I got to a size 4 and said , ` Why not a size 2 ? ' Then I slapped myself and went from 118 to 122 , which is the right weight for me . '' But her battles against addiction have played havoc with her fight against the bulge . And her persistent back problems have nurtured her dependence on pills . Her addictions have even been linked to a criminal investigation by the Los Angeles County district attorney 's office ; last week , prosecutors announced that no charges would be filed against Taylor 's doctors , who had been accused of over-prescribing dependence-forming drugs . Taylor , the first celebrity known to enter the Betty Ford clinic in Rancho Mirage , made a public example of her willingness to take on her addictions in two heavily publicized stays there . When Taylor first checked in , in 1983 , she admitted to 35 years of addiction to pain killers and sleeping pills . She kept a diary that poignantly described that stay as `` probably the first time since I was 9 that nobody 's wanted to exploit me . Now the bad news . I feel like hell . I 'm going through withdrawal . My heart feels big and pounding . I can feel the blood rush through my body . I can almost see it , running like red water over the boulders in my pain-filled neck and shoulders , then through my ears and into my pounding head . My eyelids flutter . Oh God , I am so , so tired . '' But the Betty Ford clinic encouraged Taylor only to fight the good fights that had brought her there , rather than take on all addictions -- to drugs and food -- at once . And the late '80s had found Liz , hobbled by back pain , returning to those two sources of comfort . Taylor regained much of the weight , even though she took her drug problems in hand once again in a second stay at the Betty Ford clinic in 1988 . But through her ordeals , she has remained the same charmingly vain Liz who once declared her hobbies to be clothes and jewels . She never budged from her room at Betty Ford without her trademark darkened eyebrows . And even when she was ambushed recently by a Star photographer , Liz could n't help being , well , Liz . Says the Star 's Levine : `` No matter how sick she was , when someone down on the ground told her she was being photographed , she put on sunglasses , even though she had an IV in her arm , as if to cover herself up . Typical Liz Taylor . It was sad and sweet , at the same time . ''
extractive_keyphrases: liz taylor pneumonia rumors celebrity addictions
abstractive_keyphrases: st. john's hospital