Colin Farrell Reveals ‘Romantic Relationship’ With Elizabeth Taylor [Video]

Colin Farrell revealed that he had, what he considered, a “romantic relationship” with Elizabeth Taylor prior to her death.

On Monday’s episode of Ellen, Farrell said he “bumped into” Taylor’s manager and close friend, Tim Mendelson, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital when his youngest son, Henry, was born in October 2009. Taylor was having a stent put in her heart, and Farrell asked Mendelson to tell her he said hello, even though he wasn’t sure she would know who he was. She did, which Farrell thought was “cool.”

When he brought his son home a few days later, Farrell called his publicist and said that he ran into some of Taylor’s people and that he had sent her some flowers. His publicist told him, “That’s funny, I’m looking at an orchid from Elizabeth Taylor for you.” He asked her to send over the flowers, which came with a handwritten note. A week later he asked if he could go see her in the hospital.

“I got to have an audience with her,” the Saving Mr. Banks star said. “And that was the beginning of a year and a half or two years of what was a really cool [relationship]. It was kind of like the last — it feels like in my head, not hers, I’m projecting — but the last kind of romantic relationship I had. Which was never consummated.”

Colin Farrell said Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t much of a sleeper, and he would call her at 2 in the morning and ask the nurse if she was awake. They would talk for half an hour to an hour.

“I just adored her,” Farrell said. “She was a spectacular, spectacular woman. I wanted to be [husband] No. 8, but we ran out of road.”

Elizabeth Taylor was married eight times to seven husbands: Conrad “Nicky” Hilton, Michael Wilding, Mike Todd, Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton (twice), John Warner, and Larry Fortensky. Her marriage to Todd was the only one that did not result in divorce; he died in an airplane crash a year into their marriage. Taylor called him one of the three loves of her life, along with Burton and jewelry.

Elizabeth Taylor died on March 23, 2011 of congestive heart failure at the age of 79. She was surrounded by her four children, 10 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Colin Farrell was one of the few non-family members to attend her private funeral, where he recited Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo,” as requested by Taylor.

“Elizabeth chose it,” Farrell told Access Hollywood at the time. “It was a tricky poem as well. Even in passing she had me under the thumb, sweating bricks.”