Elizabeth Taylor, contrary to a New York tabloid report, was not hospitalized because of her grief over her friend Michael Jackson’s death, according to her publicist.
Taylor, 77, was admitted to a Los Angeles hospital last week for scheduled testing, which the legendary actress herself announced in an online message posted on Twitter.com. “Although my grief over Michael could not be any deeper, I am not on suicide watch as some of the cheaper ‘rags’ would have you believe,” Taylor tweeted July 5. A New York Post column published Tuesday quoted an unidentified source as saying she was hospitalized because the “heart’s gone out of her” after Jackson’s death last month. Taylor — who uses a wheelchair because of scoliosis, or abnormal curving of the spine — gave fans several days advance notice of her hospitalization through her Twitter.com account, DameElizabeth. “I wanted you my friends to know that I’m going into the hospital Wednesday or Thursday to complete a test I was in the middle of,” she wrote. Taylor said she declined an invitation to speak about Jackson at his public memorial because she “cannot be part of the public whoopla.” “I just don’t believe that Michael would want me to share my grief with millions of others,” Taylor tweeted. “How I feel is between us. Not a public event. “I certainly don’t want to become a part of it,” she said. “I love him too much. … And I cannot guarantee that I would be coherent to say a word.” Her publicist, Dick Guttman, said last week’s messages from Taylor “still pertain.” Taylor regularly posts short messages to her 111,000 Twitter followers through the account she opened this year at the suggestion of her close friend model-actress-author-businesswoman Kathy Ireland, Guttman said.
