Before Gal Gadot, Liz Taylor sparked debate as Jewish actress playing Cleopatra - The Times of Israel

The most famous Cleopatra film was released in 1963 and starred Elizabeth Taylor.

The film was hugely expensive for the time — Taylor was reportedly the first actress to get paid $1 million for a role — and hugely successful, even though it was plagued by rumors of Taylor’s affair with co-star Richard Burton and all kinds of other on-set drama.

At the time, Egypt saw Israel as its enemy and banned any kind of relations with Jews and Israelis.

She and Burton, who became one of her several husbands, helped raise close to a million dollars for Israel at a 1967 fundraiser; later in 1967, she canceled a trip to a film festival in Moscow in “opposition to the Soviet diplomatic offensive against Israel”; Taylor and Burton made headlines by visiting Israel in 1975; Taylor joined in a telegram defending Israel that was sent by 60 prominent women, including Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem, to the head of the UN in 1975; in 1983, Taylor attempted a “one-woman peace effort,” as JTA wrote at the time, visiting both Prime Minister Menachem Begin in Jerusalem and Lebanon President Amin Gemayel in Beirut as the countries tried to strike a peace treaty after the previous year’s war