20/20

To celebrate the publication of her new book, My Love Affair with Jewelry, Dame Elizabeth sat down with Barbara Walters to chat about her legendary collection. She shares the sentimental stories behind some of her most treasured pieces, especially those given by her two great loves, Mike Todd and Richard Burton.

Adorning Elizabeth’s finger during the interview was a recent acquisition: a coloured diamond ring by her friend, the jewelry designer Lorraine Schwartz. She purchased the ring, boasting a dazzling 27.42 carat fancy intense yellow diamond, as a gift for herself. “You’re so good to you,” teases Walters. “Well, there’s nobody else around,” Elizabeth points out, laughing.

“Do people still go out and wear jewelry? Do you still wear this?” asks Walters. Elizabeth, dusting off the Southern accent she perfected for film roles such as Raintree County, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Suddenly, Last Summer, replies: “Well, honey, I do.”

Walters shares the story behind the legendary Cartier rubies and diamonds that Mike Todd lavished on a pregnant Elizabeth while the couple were staying at Villa Fiorentina in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and eagerly awaiting the arrival of their daughter, Liza. “I’d never seen anything like that in my life,” says Elizabeth. “I probably never will again. I mean, he was so generous and took such care of me. I felt so protected—and loved.”

“His legacy to me was love,” she adds. “He taught me what love really meant.”

Asked to describe her second great love, Richard Burton, for those who might be too young to be familiar with him, an incredulous Elizabeth encourages viewers to “Go to a video store and rent Anne of a Thousand Days. Rent Becket. Rent Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” “Richard Burton was a great actor,” says Walters. “And a hunk,” adds Elizabeth. The two go on to discuss some of the gems Richard showered on Elizabeth, including the Krupp diamond. “Look at it, the hypnotic beauty that pulls you in and doesn’t let you go,” she says, before slipping the ring off her finger and handing it to Walters to try on.

“Elizabeth,” asks Walters, “when you look back over that period of your life, remembering it in part from all of these magnificent jewels, what are your thoughts when you look back?” “How grand it was,” she replies, “how lucky I was that I was their guardian, their protector, and nobody could have enjoyed them or had more fun with them.”

After Elizabeth confirms that new men in her life have found it awkward or uncomfortable when she wears jewelry given by previous loves (“So I’ve been told,” she says), Walters asks her how she handles it.

“Encourage them to give me more,” she says with a sly smile and a laugh.