I thought she was astonishingly beautiful in her heyday, and not a bad actress despite making many not so great films - but in her good films she really was terrific. I loved her in National Velvet, Jane Eyre, Suddenly Last Summer and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Even in her lesser films she was always good.
She was so glamorous but seemed to have a wonderful earthy and self-deprecating sense of humour - in interviews she was always witty and seemed not to take herself too seriously.
Yes, she had that soap opera life with all the marriages, the illnesses and near death experiences, and all those diamonds she collected. But she also did much fine and pioneering work for AIDS research, and by all accounts she was kind, generous, loyal and very funny person in her private life.
With her dying, there are no more real movie stars left.
