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YIKES

Actress Admits Gross Beauty Blunder She Made in Front of Elizabeth Taylor

The pair became friends despite the embarrasing incident.

Cailey PetschHealth and Beauty Intern

PublishedJul 1, 2026, 2:29 PM EDT

UpdatedJul 1, 2026, 2:32 PM EDT

Updated Jul 1, 2026, 2:32 PM EDTPublished Jul 1, 2026, 2:29 PM EDT

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A soap opera star confessed that her longtime friendship with the late Elizabeth Taylor began in a humiliating way.

​In a June 28 episode of the Celebrity Drop Podcast, Australian host Craig Bennet prompted Linda Gray, 85, to share how she connected with Taylor, who died in 2011.

Gray, who portrayed Sue Ellen on CBS’s long-running soap opera Dallas, recalled suffering an awkward beauty mishap at her first lunch date with the Hollywood icon.

​“Did I read somewhere that you cooked lunch for her once?” asked Bennet, adding, “She came over to your place. You got together a lunch?”

​“Yes. That was kind of a shock, because I didn’t know,” Gray answered. “The mutual friend that we had called me and said, like, around, I don’t know, eleven, ‘well we’re going to pop by on the way to Santa Barbara.’ I said lovely. And he said, ‘Well, we’re bringing Elizabeth, and her assistant Liz,’ whom I adore to this day.”

A mutual friend, the soap star said, was an interior decorator working on Taylor’s home who informed her that the two would “pop by for lunch.”

This impromptu prospect frightened the actress. “Oh my god, Elizabeth Taylor’s coming for lunch,” she recalled thinking. “What am I going to fix?”

She continued, “And I didn’t have time. I didn’t. I had about 45 minutes to pull this lunch together, but it was a little stressful.”

“I thought, ‘Well, I don’t have time to put makeup on and do all that. I have to focus on the cooking,’ which I did,” she said. “So, I ran in, and I thought, ‘OK, I’ll just put a little moisturizer on my face. Just tap it on a little lipstick and off I go.’”

It was only later that Gray realized the “moisturizer” she had applied to her skin was an entirely different beauty product—one that should never be left on for an extended period.

​“During the lunch, the man, Waldo, who was the decorator, and his assistant were next to me, and he went like this,” tapping the side of her mouth, the actress explained, “as you do when somebody has something on their mouth from eating.”

​“And so I was like, ‘Wait a minute. I’d better check.’ So I took my napkin, and I tapped to see if maybe it was some breadcrumb or something. And then we continued the lunch. And then, about 10 minutes later, he did the same thing on this side [the other]. And I just sort of delicately did this,” she says, tapping the corner of her mouth, “and thought, ‘What happened to me?’”

​Gray explained that Taylor and their mutual friend left after the quick lunch, and she began cleaning up afterward.

​“They went on to Santa Barbara, and I cleaned up the lunch and dishes, and then I ran into my bathroom and took one look in the mirror, and I was shocked,” Gray revealed. “I had put on, inadvertently, a peeling mask for lunch with Elizabeth Taylor.”

“It was the funniest luncheon,” she added. “And graciously, nobody said anything.”

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​Eventually, Gray and Taylor became good friends and even gave each other nicknames.

​“She was funny, and a bawdy broad is what I called her, and she called me the b---h with the long legs,” said Gray. “I called her a bawdy broad, and that was fun.”

​Gray’s “long legs” were a pinnacle part of her modeling career before acting, when they appeared on the iconic movie poster for The Graduate.

“For decades, the world thought that those gorgeous gams belonged to Anne Bancroft, but no, we discover they were yours,” ​Bennet said, referring to the actress who starred opposite Sean Penn in the 1967 film.

​“Well, it was the photographer who called me one afternoon. He called, and I had worked with him before, and he called me, and he said, ‘If you’re free this afternoon, can you come by? I need to photograph your legs.”

Gray continued, “And I thought that’s kind of an odd thing, you know, not like another odd one that popped up in my life. And I thought, ‘My legs?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, it’s for a movie poster.’ And that’s all he said.”

Her paycheck for the poster was $25—a mere $12.50 per leg—but she later played Mrs. Robinson in the stage adaptation of the film.

​“And I never knew because then I was blessed to do The Graduate, the play, in London,” said Gray. “And I was shocked.”

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Cailey PetschHealth and Beauty Intern

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