Liz Taylor in Trial Separation

Actress Elizabeth Taylor and her seventh husband, construction worker Larry Fortensky, reportedly are separating after nearly four years of wedded bliss, according to syndicated columnist Liz Smith.

The 63-year-old actress, with one of the most enduring faces on the Hollywood screen and an equally enduring reputation for running through husbands, told Smith that she and Fortensky had decided to separate.

“Larry and I both need our space now,” the actress said. “So we have agreed to a trial separation. We both hope this is only temporary.”

The unlikely couple--she’s 63, he’s 43--took their vows in typical Hollywood fashion at a lavish wedding staged at singer Michael Jackson’s 2,700-acre Santa Ynez Valley ranch, over which paparazzi hovered in helicopters like honeybees.

Taylor met the twice-divorced construction worker in 1988 when both were battling drug dependencies at the Betty Ford Center.

“We weren’t thinking of each other in a romantic way then,” Fortensky said of the meeting in a 1992 Life magazine interview. “We felt close.”

Taylor’s celebrated marriages have been to men such as hotel heir Nicky Hilton, producer Mike Todd, singer Eddie Fisher and actor Richard Burton.