LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Elizabeth Taylor says in a TV interview that she was beaten by her father when she was a child film star but has long since forgiven him, according to a transcript. "I don‘t talk about it. But when I was a little girl, my father was abusive when he drank and seemed to kind of like to bat me around a bit," Taylor told Barbara Walters in a show to be broadcast Sunday night before the Oscars on ABC. "I don‘t blame him at all. I know he was drunk when he did it. I know he didn‘t mean to do it. He didn‘t know what he was doing," she said of her father, Francis, who was an art dealer. The two-time Oscar winner, who has been largely out of the public eye since having surgery to remove a brain tumour in 1997, attributed her father‘s behaviour, in part, to her sudden success as a child. Taylor was signed to a contract with Universal Pictures in 1941 at the age of nine. In retrospect, she told Walters, "I started thinking about my father and how it must have felt for him to have his nine-year-old daughter making more money than he was, all of a sudden shoot to fame, when he had been this very proud, beautiful, dignified man." Taylor denied suffering any lasting emotional effects from her experience and said she repaired her relationship with her father when she was a young woman. In the interview, Taylor also credited veteran actor Rod Steiger with helping her overcome a crushing bout of depression and denied rumours they were romantically involved. Taylor, who won best actress Academy Awards for "Butterfield 8" in 1960 and "Who‘s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in 1966, said she would like to make another film but has received no offers because "they‘re scared to insure me." Except for a small role in the 1994 live-action remake of the Hanna Barbera cartoon "The Flintstones," Taylor has not acted on the big screen in a decade, spending most of her time in recent years campaigning for charities. Taylor was forced to cancel an appearance last year to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild due to a spinal fracture she suffered in a fall at her home. That injury marked the latest in a series of health problems Taylor has suffered in recent years.