‘Larry the Lion’ in winter

last updated 8 January 2015

Larry Fortensky will forever be known as Liz Taylor’s hunky last husband, said Caroline Graham in the London Daily Mail. Taylor caused an uproar in 1991 when she married Fortensky, then a construction worker with long blond hair whom she called “Larry the Lion.” They met at the Betty Ford Center. “Elizabeth was in there for pills. I was in there for beer,” says Fortensky, now 59. “We had an instant physical attraction. She was funny and sweet; of course, she was very pretty. I wasn’t too bad-looking in those days either.”

He was also 20 years younger, but Liz made Larry her eighth husband at a wedding at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, with paparazzi in helicopters whirling overhead. Fortensky found himself sailing on Taylor’s yacht and traveling the world. “We had a dinner in Japan that cost $30,000. The beef had been hand-massaged or something.” At home, Taylor’s chauffeur delivered his lunch to the construction site. “It was so embarrassing. The guys would rib me about it.”

They divorced in 1996, and Fortensky’s life went downhill; a decade ago, he fell down a flight of stairs while drunk, and is now bloated and reclusive. He says, however, that he and Liz stayed in touch over the years, and that she left him $800,000 in her will. “I love her, I always will,” he says. “And I know she loved me too.”