First things first: don't call her Liz. She hates that name. She is "Elizabeth" to her friends, although really close chums have tagged her, to her delight, with all sorts of nicknames - friendly, randy, rude and otherwise. She loves to laugh, and for a person who has spent more time in hospitals than ninety-nine percent of the people in the world, she has an amazingly upbeat disposition. She is one of the great survivors. And one of the legendary beauties, of course. Further, the support she has given to others, both emotionally and financially, rank her as a genuine Earth Mother and, for someone who has long personified both pulchritude and allure, she seems much prouder of being a grandmother than of having graced magazine covers and won Oscars¨. There is something else about Elizabeth Taylor which might surprise you: for someone who has been every inch a star for nearly 60 years, in her personal life she is remarkably low-maintenance. It astonishes even her closest chums that sheÕs so easy to be around. She knows how to be a friend. She also knows how to grab newspaper space when it's to her advantage; no fool is she, but then we always sensed that, didn't we? She also learned her craft well, and it was while working with Montgomery Clift and director George Stevens on A Place in the Sun (1951) that she decided, she said, "to learn to act rather than just stand around, yawning my way through movies as I had been doing." After that came some remarkable work which we'll be showing during our salute to Elizabeth as our January star of the month; we'll also prove that even during her yawning period, she was still someone well worth ogling. Beyond all that, probably the rarest thing about this most famous of all the E.T.'s (Mr. Spielberg's Extra-Terrestrial and "Entertainment Tonight" included) is the fact that she's been able to fascinate the world for so many years with no noticeable dips along the way, with no absences on her part and no boredom on ours. No one has ever matched her record for having a love affair with the public. If you wonder why, check our Elizabeth movies from January 25-30. Enough said. Robert Osborne is a film expert, columnist, and critic for The Hollywood Reporter while he serves as our TCM host. He is also a respected author of 11 books, including 70 Years of Oscar.