Liz Taylor Alzheimer-Free

Elizabeth Taylor is speaking out against tabloid "death watch" reports that she's gravely ill and fighting a losing battle--or any battle--with Alzheimer's disease.

In her first television interview in three years, the legendary Dame scoffed at the rumors on Larry King Live Tuesday night, claiming she's never suffered from the debilitating disease and that reports to the contrary are simply "dirty."

"Oh, come on, do I look like I'm dying?" she said on the CNN show. "Do I look like or sound like I have Alzheimer's?"

When asked by King what prompted the widely circulated death bed reports, Taylor placed the blame squarely on the press, saying they publish the made-up tales "because they have nothing else dirty to write about anybody else. They won't let me retire."

The suspendered host kicked off the questioning by asking to "clear up some things. A lot of tabloid stories about you."

"Oh, my god," Taylor said. "Am I dead? Am I alive?"

The 74-year-old screen legend has recently been the subject of a flurry of grave headlines that came in the wake of a National Enquirer cover story titled "Liz Alzheimer's Tragedy." The story, appearing in the tabloid's June 5 issue, cited a "longtime friend" of the actress alleging that Taylor was being treated for the onset of the disease and that doctors were worried the one-woman perfumery was "slipping mentally."

"Do you think any friends of mine would say things like that?" she said when asked about the National Enquirer story.

"I think they're trying to sell magazines and the only way they can do it is by being dirty...They like filth. And if they want to hear that I'm dead, sorry, folks, I'm not. And I don't plan on it."

While Taylor is far from her death bed, she did admit that she's not quite at the peak of her health, responding to King's query over why she was in a wheelchair.

"My back, which has been chronically bad since I was a teenager," she said. "I was born with scoliosis. But not too many people--you know now."

"Do you think about [dying]?" King asked.

"No...no. I've been there, I've done that," Taylor said, referring to a bout of pneumonia she battled in London which resulted in doctors pronouncing her dead no fewer that four times.

The three-time Oscar recipient also touched on a relationship that's left many baffled, her longtime friendship with Michael Jackson.

She said that she befriended the eccentric pop star after attending a concert but leaving halfway through after her seats in the nosebleed section kept her from being able to see or hear the performance.

"Michael heard that I had left halfway through, and called me the next day, and was like in tears because he had heard that I'd walked out," she said. "I hadn't walked out. I just couldn't see anything."

She said the duo talked on the phone for upwards of three hours and kept talking. They eventually met and "just became really good friends."

"We're very much alike," she said.

As for the child-molestation charges brought against Jackson in 2004, Taylor said simply, "I've never been so angry in my life."

She also appeared to dash the hopes of any eager fans awaiting the release of Jackson's long-promised Hurricane Katrina charity single, telling King she doubted her friend would ever work or live in the U.S. again.

"Well, really, why should he? He's been treated like dirt here," she said.