Last updated: 01 September 2009
Richard Burton was perhaps Wales' best-known actor in the 20th century. He was famously twice married to Elizabeth Taylor.
He was born Richard Walter Jenkins in Pontrhydyfen on 10 November 1925, the 12th of 13 children. The Jenkins family was working class and Welsh speaking, and his father worked in the mines.
Burton's mother died in childbirth in 1927; her sister Cecilia and her husband Elfed brought him up in their Port Talbot house. His father was largely absent during his childhood, though Burton's brother Ifor, 19 years his senior, became an important influence.
He displayed a talent for English and Welsh literature at school, though his main passion was for sports. His schoolmaster, Philip Burton, became something of a mentor, encouraging him to take part in school stage productions.
Early on he displayed a strong speaking and singing voice, and won an Eisteddfod prize as a boy soprano. At 16 Burton left school and found work in a wartime co-operative, exchanging coupons for supplies.
After joining the Air Training Corps' Port Talbot squadron as a cadet he became reacquainted with Philip Burton, who was the squadron's commander. He also joined a youth drama group where his passion for acting grew.
Philip Burton adopted Richard, who returned to school and worked hard to develop his acting potential. He starred as Henry Higgins in a YMCA production of Pygmalion. In 1943, at the age of 18, he began a six-month term at Exeter College, Oxford, before serving as a navigator in the RAF between 1944 and 1947.
After leaving the RAF in 1947 he moved to London to find work as an actor. He signed up with a theatrical agency, and his first professional roles were in radio plays for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and in the film The Last Days Of Dolwyn.
On the set of the film he met Sybil Williams, an actress whom he married in February 1949. They had two daughters together - Kate and Jessica Burton - but divorced in 1963 following Burton's affair with Elizabeth Taylor.
During the 1950s his profile grew, with London and New York appearances in The Lady's Not For Burning, alongside John Gielgud and Claire Bloom. Burton also took minor roles in a number of British films.
His performance as Prince Henry in a 1951 Stratford production of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 won him critical acclaim, and elevation into circle of great British actors: Kenneth Tynan said: "His playing of Prince Hal turned interested speculation to awe almost as soon as he started to speak; in the first intermission local critics stood agape in the lobbies."
The acclaim accelerated Burton's hard living, and his already substantial love of drinking began to take hold. In 1952 his Hollywood career began after he signed a five-year contract with director/producer Alexander Korda, which earned him £100 a week.
Burton's arrival in Hollywood coincided with a rise in the fortunes of television; film studios were in decline as viewers stayed at home, and stars were in short supply. 20th Century Fox signed up Burton for three films at $50,000 each - the first was My Cousin Rachel, for which he was given the lead role upon the recommendation of Daphne du Maurier.
The film was a critical and commercial success, establishing Burton as a Hollywood leading man and gaining him an Academy Award nomination and Golden Globe award.
In 1954 he took his best-known radio role, as the narrator in the Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, which he reprised in a film version 20 years later.
A number of high profile film roles followed, including Alexander The Great (1956), for which he played the title role. His 1958 appearance in Look Back In Anger, meanwhile, was poorly received by critics, although Burton was proud of his performance.
Burton's theatre career was running in tandem with his appearances on the silver screen. He played Coriolanus and Hamlet at the Old Vic in 1953; during the latter he embarked on a turbulent affair with Claire Bloom, who played Ophelia.
He received a Tony Award nomination for his Broadway performance in Time Remembered (1958), and won a Tony for playing King Arthur in the 1960 musical Camelot. In 1964 he won a third award for reprising his role as Hamlet, in a 1964 production directed by John Gielgud.
After Hamlet he rarely appeared on stage, although he returned in 1976 to perform in Equus as psychiatrist Martin Dysart - a role he repeated in the 1977 film adaptation. Afterwards his only other theatre roles were in a lucrative 1980 touring production of Camelot, and in a poorly-received production of Noël Coward's Private Lives opposite his ex-wife Elizabeth Taylor in 1983.
In 1963 he took the role of Mark Antony in Cleopatra, acting opposite Elizabeth Taylor. At the time it was the most expensive film ever made, with costs reaching almost $40 million. It was a huge success, and established Burton as one of Hollywood's top earners.
Perhaps more significantly, it was on the set of Cleopatra that Burton and Taylor fell in love. Although they were both married to others at the time, their relationship was endlessly scrutinised and celebrated by the media. The couple married on 15 March 1964 in Montreal, Canada, against the advice of his family.
A succession of film roles followed, several alongside Taylor. These included The Sandpiper (1965), Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Taming Of The Shrew (1967). Later collaborations, however, were less well received by audiences.
Burton and Taylor adopted a three-year-old German girl in 1964. The couple divorced in 1974, but remarried on 10 October 1975. The second union lasted less than a year.
After a triumphant performance alongside Clint Eastwood in 1968's Where Eagles Dare, Burton's fortunes began to decline. Subsequent roles were panned by critics, although a notable high point came in 1978 with his narration of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.
During his long film career Richard Burton was nominated six times for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and once for Best Supporting Actor. Despite this he never won.
Burton's love of alcohol was notorious from his earliest days as an actor. His use increased dramatically after his brother Ifor died in 1972, and contributed to the failure of his first marriage to Taylor.
In 1976 he fell in love with Susan Hunt, the estranged wife of racing driver James Hunt, during theatre rehearsals for Equus. They married in the same year, and remained so until 1982. Although it remained in the background, Burton's alcoholism was said to have been tempered by Susan.
In 1982 he met Sally Hay on the set of the film Wagner, and the couple married in 1983. The following year, on 5 August, Burton died of a cerebral haemorrhage in Geneva, Switzerland, at the age of 58. He was buried four days later in Céligny, dressed in a red suit and with a copy of the collected poems of Dylan Thomas.
Academy Award nominations
- 1952: Best Supporting Actor, My Cousin Rachel
- 1953: Best Actor, The Robe
- 1964: Best Actor, Becket
- 1965: Best Actor, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
- 1966: Best Actor, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
- 1969: Best Actor, Anne of the Thousand Days
- 1977: Best Actor, Equus
BAFTA Awards
- 1967: Best Actor, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
- 1967: Best Actor, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Golden Globe Awards
- 1953: Most Promising Newcomer - Male, My Cousin Rachel
- 1978: Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, Equus
Tony Awards
- 1961: Best Actor - Musical, Camelot
- 1976: Special Award
