Rachel Weisz to Play Elizabeth Taylor In AIDS Activism Biopic

A Special Relationship focuses on Taylor's friendship with her gay assistant Roger Wall and on being a pioneering ally for people with HIV and AIDS.

Tracy E. Gilchrist

Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP of Editorial and Special Projects at equalpride. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.

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Tracy E. Gilchrist

October 28 2019 11:57 AM EST

October 28 2019 2:31 PM EST

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Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz is going from playing queer in back-to-back films last year (Disobedience, The Favourite) to portraying Elizabeth Taylor in a biopic that will spotlight the gay icon's AIDS activism, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Battle of the Sexes and Slumdog Millionaire scribe Simon Beaufoy wrote the screenplay based on interviews and conversations with people who knew Taylor. The female directing duo of Bert and Bertie (this year's Sundance smash Troop Zero) will helm. The team behind The King's Speech is producing.

The film, titled A Special Relationship, focuses on the abiding friendship between Hollywood icon Taylor and her personal assistant Roger Wall (a gay man who grew up in poverty in the Deep South) and how the AIDS epidemic shaped their lives.

"Audiences are clearly fascinated by the private lives of iconic Hollywood stars," producers Iain Canning and Emile Sherman said, according to THR.

"There is no one more iconic than Elizabeth Taylor, and Simon Beaufoy has written a role that shines a light on Elizabeth's humor and humanity, which will be beautifully brought to life through the extraordinary talents of Rachel Weisz."

An Oscar winner for Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Taylor became an outspoken AIDS activist early in the epidemic and a founding national chairperson of the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Wall was HIV-positive and died by suicide in 1991. Taylor called his death "one of the biggest losses of my life" in a 1992 Vanity Fair expose.