Elton, David and everyone at the Elton John AIDS Foundation is mourning the loss of actress and HIV/AIDS activist Elizabeth Taylor.

“We have just lost a Hollywood giant, but more importantly we have lost an incredible human being,” Elton said in a statement. “Elizabeth Taylor earned her fame with her extraordinary talent as a young actress, making her first movie at the tender age of nine. She earned our adoration for her stunning beauty and for being the very essence of glamorous movie stardom. And she earned our enduring love and respect for her compassion and her courage in standing up and speaking out about AIDS when others preferred to bury their heads in the sand.”

And David, the Chairman of Elton John Aids Foundation, expressed the same love for Elizabeth: “In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, Elizabeth Taylor was a force of nature,” he added in a statement. “She compelled people to listen, made them respond, and urged them to act. She gave comfort to the dying, roundly condemned the stigma associated with AIDS, and was fiercely critical of the government’s sluggish, reluctant response to the epidemic.”

Elizabeth founded the National AIDS Research Foundation in the early 1980s and joined with Dr. Mathilde Krim’s AIDS Medical Foundation in 1985, which later became amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. “Elizabeth Taylor has inspired every one of us and many millions of others around the world,” Executive Director Scott Campbell of EJAF also said in a statement. “She has shown us the meaning of courage and moral responsibility in the face of injustice and bigotry. We join our colleagues at amfAR in mourning the loss of an extraordinary leader in the fight against AIDS.”

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