My best New Year’s Eve? Nothing comes close: the night I spent with Elizabeth Taylor in Las Vegas.

Put more accurately, the night I met and interviewed the film icon.

It was Dec. 31, 2001. Siegfried and Roy’s publicist Frank Lieberman called me out of the blue earlier in the day, with the invitation. “We’re going to have a special guest and Siegfried and Roy want you to be there,” he said, without giving away the secret.

I had been writing the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s gossip column for two years and this was the first time I got a personal invitation. I had no idea who the big celebrity was but I was hooked when Lieberman made a point of saying “you’re the only one who’s getting the story.”

After the show, I met Lieberman and followed him back toward Siegfried and Roy’s dressing room.

We came around a corner and there was Taylor, seated in a wheelchair and dripping with her favorite jewelry. In her lap was her beloved white Maltese Terrier, Sugar, who had his own V.I.P seat next to her during the show.

Lieberman introduced us.

I didn’t have any prepared questions because I didn’t know who I was meeting, so I winged it with a Vegas angle.

Did she ever date Elvis?

“No,” she said. But he had called her at her home one day and asked her out.

“I was in a relationship at the time,” she said. “He was very much a gentleman and thanked him.”

I couldn’t help but notice her gargantuan diamond ring.

“Is that the Krupp?” I asked.

“Yes, it is,” she said, and held it out for better viewing. It was such a surreal experience.

I asked how long she knew Siegfriend and Roy.

For many years, she said. “They are dear friends.” I would later find a photo of her with the duo dated 1976.

I don’t recall the rest of the questions. I do recall being invited into the dressing room for her photo session with Siegfried and Roy and a young white tiger. I regret I didn’t ask the name of the tiger.

I was invited to be part of the media scrum for her 75th birthday Feb. 27, 2007 at the Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas. It was as if the world came to a stop when the two-time Oscar winner, a blonde for the occasion, made her entrance in a white fur and satin robe, accessorized with an icicle-design pearl and diamond necklace.

She was in a wheelchair again, due to chronic back pain. Accompanying her were sons Michael and Christopher Wilding and daughters, Maria Burton and Liza Todd. Other guests among the 50 attending the New Orleans-themed soiree included Steve and Elaine Wynn and Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher. I believe Siegfried and Roy were there as well.

A Hollywood megastar synonymous with glamour, she died of congestive heart failure March 23, 2011 in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She received her first Oscar in 1960 for best actress for her role as a call girls in “Butterfield 8.” In 1966 she won her second as the embittered Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

She loved Las Vegas.

MY NEW YEAR’S EVE WITH LIZ TAYLOR