Elizabeth Taylor’s obituaries had been written and ready to go for years when she died Wednesday. In search of fresher encomia beyond biography, we called a grab bag of notables and cinephiles and asked them to impart their favorite Elizabeth Taylor moments, on-screen or off-screen.

“ ‘Boom,’ to me, is the greatest failed art film ever. And in it is her most troubling and beautiful and insane performance. . . . She plays the richest woman in the world, Sissy Goforth, who’s about to die, and Richard Burton plays the angel of death who visits her. She coughs blood on a handkerchief and goes, ‘Oh look, a paper rose.’ It’s pretty out there. . . . I met her and I told her I loved it and she thought I was insulting her at first.”

— JOHN WATERS, director of “Hairspray” and “Pink Flamingos”

“She was the first one at rehearsal, she was ready, she knew her words, she was a delight to work with. . . . The only problem we faced was that Elizabeth was used to movie takes, which last about three minutes, but onstage, of course, you had to be ready for at least a half an hour. Sometimes we would notice that after three minutes or so, Elizabeth’s eyes would wander — she was used to that short take — but if you could grab her attention onstage, she was fire and ice.”

— TOM ALDREDGE, her co-star in “The Little Foxes” on Broadway in 1981

“One of my favorite Elizabeth Taylor movies is the lesser-known ‘X, Y and Zee’ in 1972. Pauline Kael raved about this performance and I agree. The character is a shrew . . . but somehow she found something deeper and more meaningful in this harpy, even though the text and the direction are not quite as inspired as Albee or Nichols. . . . Taylor had been making oddball films since ‘Secret Ceremony,’ a deadpan black comedy in 1968, and she would continue to do so, appearing in strange movies such as ‘The Driver’s Seat’ and ‘Hammersmith Is Out.’ Was she taking chances or making bad choices?”

— JOHN EPPERSON, a.k.a. LYPSINKA, entertainer and drag artist

“In ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,’ the major wordplay between her and [Paul] Newman — there’s the famous scene where he asks her, ‘What’s the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?’ And she says, ‘Staying on it.’ The two of them were magic and electric in that film. . . . During production of the film, her husband [Michael Todd] went down in a plane crash. . . . For her to block out those distractions in her personal life and deliver that kind of memorable performance speaks volumes about her abilities not only as a major star, but also a brilliant actress.”

— TIM GORDON, president of the Washington Area Film Critics Association

“I spent the most remarkable three hours with her in her living room in Bel Air in 1992. This was the genesis of getting her permission to name the new Whitman-Walker medical clinic [on 14th Street NW] after her. We largely discussed HIV and AIDS. . . . I remember that she was sitting on her couch and I was sitting on a chair, and when I could no longer absorb her incredible violet eyes, I could look above her shoulder at a van Gogh painting. . . . She was so engaged on HIV issues, so intelligent, so conversant. . . . I left totally impressed because there were so many celebrities that get involved but never really get deeply involved. But she really did.”