Shirley MacLaine got emotional while sharing a funny and surprising anecdote about her late friend, Elizabeth Taylor.
Taylor, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 79, relished doing a specific chore for her fellow Oscar-winner: washing her floors.
MacLaine, 90, made the revelation in her new book, “The Wall of Life,” which she describes as a photographic memoir.
“She was great,” the “Terms of Endearment” star said of Taylor in an interview on CBS Sunday Mornings that aired Oct. 13.
“You write in the book that she’d come over and wash your floors,” CBS correspondent Lee Cowan pointed out.
“Yeah. She just wanted to be a housewife, at least around me,” MacLaine said. “Maybe I didn’t – maybe they were always dirty. I don’t know,” she added, referring to her floors.
“She was a magnificent human being. And a very good friend.”
“We hung out for quite a while,” MacLaine shared.
When asked what she misses most about the “Cleopatra” actress, MacLaine responded, “Her realness.”
Famous almost all of her life, Taylor was pampered and lived how one might expect of a Hollywood star – one that likely didn’t involve washing floors.
That seems to have changed though when Taylor sought treatment for her addiction to alcohol and pills at the Betty Ford Clinic in 1983.
While at Betty Ford, Taylor “had to do a lot of things she never had to do in her adult life,” her son, Christopher Wilding, shared in the final episode of the BBC docuseries, “Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar,” which aired Oct. 11.
“She had to share a room with a stranger,” Wilding, 69, continued. “Everyone was assigned kind of life, domestic chores.”
MacLaine previously shared about Taylor’s affinity for housework in a 2011 chat with Leonard Lopate.
The star revealed that Taylor once came over to her house, and MacLaine’s dog, who had not been potty-trained yet, pooped on the floor. That set Taylor into a tizzy.
“Give me the paper towel so I can clean it up!” MacLaine remembered the “Suddenly Last Summer” actress exclaiming.
“And she took the paper towel and got down on her hands and knees, and she scooped up all this stuff, and washed [the floor]. And she said, ‘I just wanna be a housewife! I just want a simple life,’” MacLaine continued, reenacting the moment with emotion and flair.
Laughing at the memory, MacLaine added sarcastically, “Okay, Elizabeth.”
