Stars have been given some extraordinary gifts by their partners, acquaintances and friends. Elizabeth Taylor amassed a wide range of jewellery throughout her eight marriages, including a 38-carat diamond. Yet some gifts are extraordinary in ways more peculiar, like the novelty mini-fridge gifted to Elton John one year. Here are those stories and more:
Jack Nicholson and Angelica Houston
Twenty years of both good and bad times for this couple, with a first date cancelled by Nicholson so he could meet with a former partner instead. That should have been warning enough. The final nail in the coffin was in 1989 when Nicholson announced he was going to be a father with another woman, Rebecca Broussard, who had two children with Nicholson. After giving Jack a beating, Angelica got on with her life. For Christmas that year, Huston received a pearl and diamond bracelet which had once been a gift from Frank Sinatra to Ava Gardner. It was Jack’s way to conclude their relationship.
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper, rock and roll star, film actor, a golfing celebrity, restaurateur and a popular radio DJ is surprisingly a mild-mannered, softly spoken man. Having had issues around drugs and alcohol, he found that golf saved his sanity, a story he related in his book Golf Monster: My 12 Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict. Those close to him know just how important golf is to him. In 2015, he was presented with a gift usually seen by those looking through an anniversary gifts guide. He was presented with an Eternity Rose gold dipped golf ball and tee set by Rebel FM, during his Australian tour.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
What do you buy the man who has everything? In 2011, Angelina Jolie bought him land rights to his very own waterfall for his 48th birthday. As someone who loves architecture and taking inspiration from a visit the couple made to Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Fallingwater estate in rural Pennsylvania, she wanted to give him the opportunity to build his very own secluded hideaway directly on top of the waterfall. The concept was to be sustainability, pulling together all aspects of nature, light, glass.
Elvis and Gladys Presley
In 1955, Elvis Presley bought his first Cadillac, which was pink. He had to replace it the same year after an accident and resprayed the new model pink to match his first. After the respray was completed, Elvis gave the car as a gift to his mother, Gladys. A generous gift except, for one thing, Gladys never had a driving licence. However, she still liked people to know it was her car, even if her son would still use it to transport his band.
Rod Stewart and Elton John
Friends since the 1960s, the friends exchanged presents each Christmas. One year it went spectacularly wrong for Stewart. Considering a gift for a man who has everything, Stewart hit on the idea of a novelty portable fridge in which the door opens at a touch of a button, and a bottle rises out in a cloud of vapour. Elton’s present to him that same year was a drawing by Rembrandt. Elton’s later wedding gift to Stewart was a £10 superstore voucher for “something nice for the house”.
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor
Married in 1964, Burton bought his wife Elizabeth Taylor a 68-carat diamond ring five years later, for which he paid $1.1 million, outbidding the Sultan of Brunei and world-famous jeweller Harry Winston. While the diamond made a fabulous necklace for Taylor, the million-dollar insurance policy only allowed her to wear the diamond for 30 days each year and in public only under armed guard.
Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx
In 2010, after Robert Downey Jr. acquired a ranch in Malibu after his friend Jami Foxx went to visit the family there, he surprised him with a pair of horses for his 45th birthday as he had seen that the stables were empty. It was only later that Downey admitted that he was terrified of horses but appreciated the gesture and in return gifted his Vintage El Camino, the one from the Iron Man movie, to Foxx.
