Elizabeth Taylor told Lesley-Anne Down ‘a vodka and orange at breakfast is a really good thing’
Elizabeth Taylor told Lesley-Anne Down ‘a vodka and orange at breakfast is a really good thing’
Rance CollinsThu, September 24, 2026 at 6:30 PM UTC
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Lesley-Anne Down and Elizabeth Taylor in the 1970sCredit: TV Times via Getty; Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via GettyKey Points -
Lesley-Anne Down made two projects with Elizabeth Taylor, including the 1977 musical “A Little Night Music.”
The two-time Oscar-winning actress gave Down unusual breakfast advice, “especially if you can’t sing.”
Down also worked three times with Olivia de Havilland, whom she tells EW had a run-in with a mouse during one of their meetings.
Lesley-Anne Down is no stranger to Hollywood legends. In her Golden Globe–nominated performance in North and South alone, she appeared with the likes of James Stewart, Patrick Swayze, and Forest Whitaker.
But one particularly esteemed actress, the true definition of a movie star, made a decided impression. Calling Elizabeth Taylor a “a very human woman and a very kind woman,” Down tells Entertainment Weekly about the unusual dietary advice she imparted when they worked together in the 1977 musical A Little Night Music, adapted from the Stephen Sondheim play of the same name.
“Elizabeth told me that a vodka and orange at breakfast is a really good thing, especially if you can’t sing,” Down relates. “In fact, more than one, very, very good.”
Elizabeth Taylor in ‘A Little Night Music’Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection
“She was one of the, I guess, famous people who I could have said was my friend,” Down continues. “She was really kind and lovely to me, and I stayed with her, as I did [with] my mother, my son, my husband. She was just a really nice human.”
Taylor’s “vodka” wisdom came prior to the actress’ famous stint at the Betty Ford Clinic, which she entered in December 1983.
“Not being a drunk is the only way I’m going to stay alive,” Taylor was quoted as telling The New York Times. “Drunk is a hard word, but I’ve had to be hard with myself to face it. A drunk is a drunk. Somebody who drinks too much is a drunk. Somebody that takes too many pills is a junkie. There’s not a polite way of saying it.”
Down worked again with Taylor on 1985’s North and South, which also starred Olivia de Havilland, a frequent collaborator of Downs, having also worked with the Hanover Street star in Pope Jone and Murder Is Easy. But de Havilland, who netted two Oscars for her work in the 1940s classics To Each His Own and The Heiress, was more austere.
“She was really intensely straight-laced. She was strangely more French than she was British,” Down shares. “I never knew her sister Joan. I never met Joan Fontaine ever. But I don’t know, I have a feeling Joan might have been chilled, more chilled. Olivia was funny.”
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Diana Rigg, Lesley-Anne Down, and Christopher Guard in ‘A Little Night Music’Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection
Down recalled one humorous tea time with de Havilland, which was hosted by Hayley and Juliet Mills’ mother (and John Mills’ wife), Mary. Also in attendance was one of Hayley’s sons, Jason “Ace” Lawson, whom she shared with Leigh Lawson.
After being instructed by his grandmother to say hello to Down and de Havilland, the young boy said, Down remembers, “I’ve got something for you.”
“He goes behind the chair where Olivia is sitting with her cup of tea, or whatever she’s got, and all of a sudden you see this 70-year-old lady catapult like she was at Houston,” she continues. “She was taking off for the moon! And she starts running around the room at top speed, screeching and clawing and screaming and clawing, and Mary and I are just going, ‘What the?’ Not moving. And Ace is just standing. The little boy is just standing, giggling, giggling, giggling. And finally, Mary says, “Ace, what did you do?’ He said, ‘Oh, I put my pet mouse down her back!’”
“[Olivia] would have got 30 Oscars for that performance,” Down adds.
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Down also recalls performing with her in another sequence from one of their projects in which they had to fight. “I had to struggle to stay upright. She was so strong. It was insane,” Down says. “She was so strong.”
Down stars as Margaret Thatcher in the film Reagan, which is back in theaters this weekend with 10 minutes of extra footage.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
