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HOLLYWOOD legend Elizabeth Taylor famously declared she only ever slept with the seven men she married.

But according to a sensational new book she had sex with scores of actors, as well as future American presidents JFK and Ronald Reagan.

She also turned a blind eye to the bisexual antics of her first five husbands, including Welsh actor Richard Burton, according to the shocking new biography.

It claims the British-born actress, who died last year aged 79, was just 12 when she had her first sexual encounter. It was with future movie director John Derek, who was six years older than her.

The book also contains an astonishing litany of allegations of the Oscar-winning star’s conquests.

Claims that Burton allegedly sexually assaulted Taylor’s fourth husband Eddie Fisher and continued to have trysts with men throughout their two marriages will stun fans of the one-time golden couple.

Burton and Taylor were popular, even bigger than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of today, and their affair that started on the set of Cleopatra caused a global scandal.

Darwin Porter, a veteran Hollywood journalist and co-author of the biography, has written numerous books about icons including Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe and Katharine Hepburn.

He was close pals with Taylor’s life-long actor friend Roddy McDowall, and quotes him extensively in the 600-page book titled Elizabeth Taylor: There Is Nothing Like a Dame.

The book, a collaboration between Porter and Danforth Prince, claims that Taylor once walked in on Burton and British actor Peter Lawford in the midst of a sex act. Taylor, who had lost her virginity to Lawford in the back of a limo 20 years earlier, apparently told them: “Carry on, boys.”

Coalminer’s son Burton is quoted in the book as telling Taylor that his drama teacher mentor Philip Burton, whose surname he took, rescued him from poverty. “As a young boy, I had only sex to offer him in exchange for all the wonderful things he was doing for me,” he said.

Burton, who was 58 when he died in 1984, also allegedly told Taylor about “casting couch tumbles” with older theatrical legends Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Noel Coward.

After the first of their two marriages in 1964, the book claims Burton had an affair with architect Edward Tirella, while Taylor had the occasional fling.

But the story of his encounter with Eddie Fisher is one of the most shocking claims in the book.

In the midst of a drunken row over Taylor, Burton allegedly told singer Fisher: “You can take it willingly, like a man, or else. Either way, you’re going to get it. Your choice.”

Taylor’s personal assistant Dick Hanley told the authors that Fisher looked like “an abused, defeated man”. The book, which is published by Blood Moon Productions, opens with Taylor’s birth in Hampstead, North London, and the rumour that Tory MP Victor Cazalet was her father, rather than art dealer Francis Taylor.

When the Second World War broke out, the family moved to LA where violet-eyed Taylor quickly became a child star in films such as National Velvet and Lassie Come Home.

Sexually precocious and physically mature for her age, she set her sights on older actors, and at 15 went to 36-year-old Ronald Reagan’s apartment to lobby for a film role.

According to the book, the future American president, who was married to Jane Wyman, gave her a drink and treated her like an adult.

“I could tell he wanted to get it on but he seemed reluctant to make the first move. I wished they’d been casting Lolita around that time. I could have won an Oscar playing the nymphet,” Taylor later told her friends.

Her next political encounter was with future president John F. Kennedy, who she first met as a seven-year-old.

According to the book, she told friends she ended up in a threesome with Kennedy and actor Robert Stack. The following year she bragged of a similar encounter with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, at the time Hollywood’s leading men but secretly bisexual.

Even before she married her first husband, hotel heir Nicky Hilton, at the age of 17, Taylor had gained a reputation as a man-eater.

On honeymoon, she is said to have bedded Grace Kelly’s future husband Prince Rainier, then had afternoon trysts with Tony Curtis, who was married to her friend Janet Leigh.

The book ends in the 1960s just after the first of her two marriages to Burton. It does not mention her last two husbands, politician John Warner and construction worker Larry Fortensky, who are both still alive.

But the authors claim her other husbands, including British matinee actor Michael Wilding and film director Mike Todd, had encounters with men.

Wilding, the father of her two sons, had a long-running relationship with fellow British actor Stewart Granger, according to the book. Apparently Taylor didn’t mind, embarking on her own affair with singer Frank Sinatra.

She set her heart on marrying him and, according to the book, tried to blackmail him by saying she was pregnant. He refused and allegedly made arrangements for an abortion.

After her third husband Todd, the father of her daughter Liza, died in a plane crash in 1958 Taylor was too distraught to get out of bed.

Her worried Cat on a Hot Tin Roof co-star Paul Newman, who was newly married, went to comfort her and ended up in her bed.

“I came to my senses the moment I left her house. I couldn’t replace Todd. I have a life of my own,” he later told a friend, according to the book.

Taylor’s fans were as horrified as the movie studio executives, who had worked hard to maintain their big star’s squeaky-clean image. Yet just two years after their 1959 marriage, she embarked on an even more scandalous affair with Burton.

Towards the end of her life, the book claims Taylor told friends: “I’m called a scarlet woman. That’s wrong. I’m positively purple. And my biographers have revealed only half of my story. I can’t tell the other half – I’d get sued.”

There was outrage from some fans over the claims in the book. One online reader said it was a collection of “hateful tales”, and another declared it was “ridiculous speculation”.

But according to co-author Porter, 74, the book is an accurate reflection of her remarkable love life.

Recalling one occasion when he had dinner with her, he said: “She had a wicked wit and amused us with outrageous stories told in triple X-rated language. She was an amazing and fascinating woman.”