Elizabeth Taylor Quietly Comforted AIDS Patients During Private Visits: ‘She Made It All About’ Them (Exclusive)

Elizabeth Taylor was enough of a public figure for her entire life that it was difficult to find privacy. But when it came to her AIDS activism, she was determined to connect with patients on a personal level. 

Barbara Berkowitz, Taylor’s lawyer and cotrustee, tells PEOPLE that putting together the late Oscar winner’s archive has unearthed previously unknown facts about her life. “With AIDS, she did some of [her advocacy], obviously, public-facing,” says Berkowitz. “But one of the things we're finding now as we put together her archive is that she used to visit patients.”

Taylor, who died at age 79 in 2011 from congestive heart failure, decided later in life to raise awareness about AIDS in Washington, D.C. She had witnessed the disease’s effect on friends in her inner circle, including Giant costar Rock Hudson, who died in 1985. 

While she publicly called attention to AIDS and pressured the administration of president Ronald Reagan to address it, Berkowitz says she also worked privately on the front lines. “She wasn’t photographed,” she explains, during visits to hospital AIDS wards, “because she made it all about the patient and not all about her.” 

Many of the patients, of course, were fans — as Berkowitz herself can attest. “I used to volunteer at Cedar-Sinai in the pooch program with my big golden retriever, and I was assigned to the AIDS unit,” she recalls. “The patients love to hear that I was associated with Elizabeth. And I would call her afterwards to tell her, just [about their] admiration. They were so grateful to her.”

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“She was happy to be anonymous,” agrees Tim Mendelson, co-trustee of Taylor’s estate and her executive assistant from 1990 onward. “If she showed up for events, obviously that wasn't private. But AIDS was specific because AIDS wasn't sympathetic, and so it needed her face to get people to turn around.” 

Part of why Taylor co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) in 1985 and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) in 1991 — and deemed that 25 percent of all likeness and image royalties from her estate go to ETAF, a policy that continues to this day — was because she empathized with AIDS patients facing social stigma, Mendelson tells PEOPLE. 

“She really came from a place of love and compassion,” he says. “Everybody wanted to judge the people who had AIDS and how they got AIDS. She understood that because she was so judged, [including] for who she slept with.” 

In the late 1980s, most “weren't looking at it as a health crisis, they were looking at it as people getting what they deserved,” adds Mendelson. “That's not just with gay men and sex, it also applies to intravenous drug users. Elizabeth was able to see through to say, ‘Hey, these people are sick and they're dying and the disease is spreading, it's contagious. We have to do something about this.’”

Nanette Burstein’s new documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (which made its world premiere at May’s Cannes Film Festival and debuts on HBO Aug. 3) includes newly unearthed recordings Taylor made in 1964 and 1965 while she was married to Richard Burton. It also offers glimpses of the late actress utilizing her celebrity to call attention to issues that mattered. 

“There was always something that she was doing for the better good,” says Berkowitz, calling Taylor’s commitment to forging “her own path” — in Hollywood and with AIDS awareness — “very inspiring.”

“There was no glass ceiling for her. That is her legacy in a lot of ways.”

Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes will premiere on HBO Aug. 3.