Page 7 - Son Aids News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> matilde, let me start with you, when she got involved with aids it was incredibly unfashionable to do, a huge risk as a big star to be doing this. wasn't it? >> now, i think it was a risk for her because she has had all the strength and the courage and the dedication to do what she was doing that nobody could touch that and she really was -- the film we just saw had a say, she was never afraid of the truth. >> that's certainly true. kenneth, that was a great driving thing about elizabeth taylor was she didn't care really what people thought. she was do what she thought was the right thing. ...

Undeterred, and she had -- could not understand why everybody didn't realize how -- how critical the need was for appropriate funding and resources to address this critical aids crisis, and this was in 1985 when she and dr. krim founded amfar, and it wasn't until '87, to put just a -- to paint the times -- until ronald reagan, who was president, then mentioned aids publicly and to -- 40,000 people had already died and did it ironically aan amfar event, but she was steadfast devoted to this message, and she was an extraordinary messenger of it. >> mathilde, although you say she didn't see it as...

Generosity to this world in spite of the fact that often she was in pain. and i think the last few years in -- this is just my feeling -- didn't bring her as much joy because her body was -- was failing and she wasn't, her spirit wasn't, but her body was and it had lived a lot and suffered a lot. >> carole, what do you think would be the way that she would like to be remembered? what was most important to elizabeth, do you think? >> most important to elizabeth were her family, her friends, her care about aids research, standing up before anyone that we knew of in hollywood stood up after her f...

Something they did not know, and there was a terrible lack of resources invested in fighting aids, and the most important resource lacking was understanding and empathy, and she made the correction there, and we have had a public that is much more understanding and supportive since she became involved. >> kenneth, she came out with this phrase, "we all have aids," and that had this huge impact around the world because it was elizabeth taylor saying it. you know, what she made fashionable was it was okay to support the gay community and to support aids research and to raise money for aids in a ...

What effect do you think that liz taylor had on -- must call her elizabeth taylor, she hated being called liz even though everybody else did, that elizabeth taylor had on aids, on people, you know, wanting the treatment, what tangible effect did she have to improve people's live, do you think? >> she had two effects. i think one is that she was delivering an expression of solidarity for people at risk with this disease and -- because the despair in that community was tremendous and i shared the despair and was very upset by the situation and at the same time very encouraged by somebody like li...