MOVIES - Sept. 19, 1988

Elizabeth Taylor took an overdose of sleeping pills after Richard Burton dared her to kill herself, according to a British newspaper publishing extracts from what it said was the actor’s secret diary. The Mail on Sunday said the late Welsh actor’s fourth wife, Sally, had found the diary written in school exercise books. Burton, according to the paper, described his 1962 romance with Taylor while filming “Cleopatra” in Rome. Both were married to other partners. They drank to the point of “stupefaction and idiocy” and the British-born Hollywood actress said she was prepared to kill herself for him. “ ‘Go ahead, I said’ . . . whereupon she took a handful (of Nembutals) and swallowed them with gusto and no dramatics,” Burton wrote. According to the newspaper, Burton described a panic-stricken drive to a Rome hospital, then hiding while the press was told Taylor had a stomach complaint.