Before she was a screen goddess, Elizabeth Taylor was a 17-year-old girl writing love letters to a 22-year-old boy.

Taylor, who died last week at age 79, was apparently in love with William Pawley, the son of a former ambassador to Brazil, before she married her first husband, hotel heir Conrad Hilton, AP reports.

"I've never known this kind of love before -- it's so perfect and complete -- and mature," Taylor wrote to Pawley on