151 Facts About Richard Burton

Richard Burton was called "the natural successor to Olivier" by critic Kenneth Tynan.

Richard Burton's perceived failure to live up to those expectations disappointed some critics and colleagues; his heavy drinking added to his image as a great performer who had wasted his talent.

Richard Burton was nominated for an Academy Award seven times, but never won.

Richard Burton received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy Award.

Richard Burton received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of King Arthur in the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot.

Richard Burton remained closely associated in the public mind with his second wife, Elizabeth Taylor.

Richard Burton was the twelfth of thirteen children born into the Welsh-speaking family of Richard Walter Jenkins Sr.

Richard Burton remembered his mother to be "a very strong woman" and "a religious soul with fair hair and a beautiful face".

Edith's death was a result of postpartum infections; Richard Burton believed it occurred because of "hygiene neglect".

Richard Burton lived with Cis, Elfed and their two daughters, Marian and Rhianon, in their three bedroom terraced cottage on 73 Caradoc Street, Taibach, a suburban district in Port Talbot, which Bragg describes as "a tough steel town, English-speaking, grind and grime".

Richard Burton was responsible for nurturing a passion for rugby in young Richard.

On rugby, Richard Burton said he "would rather have played for Wales at Cardiff Arms Park than Hamlet at The Old Vic".

The Welsh rugby union centre, Bleddyn Williams believed Richard Burton "had distinct possibilities as a player".

Richard Burton took a scholarship exam for admission into Port Talbot Secondary School in March 1937 and passed it.

Richard Burton became the first member of his family to go to secondary school.

Richard Burton displayed an excellent speaking and singing voice since childhood, even winning an eisteddfod prize as a boy soprano.

Richard Burton earned pocket money by running messages, hauling horse manure, and delivering newspapers.

Richard Burton was bolstered by winning the Eisteddfod Prize and wanted to repeat his success.

Richard Burton chose to sing Sir Arthur Sullivan's "Orpheus with his Lute", which biographer Alpert thought "a difficult composition".

Richard Burton requested the help of his schoolmaster, Philip Burton, but his voice cracked during their practice sessions.

Richard Burton decided to leave school by the end of 1941 and work as a miner as Elfed was not fit, owing to illness.

Richard Burton worked for the local wartime Co-operative committee, handing out supplies in exchange for war-time ration-coupons.

Richard Burton simultaneously considered other professions for his future, including boxing, religion and singing.

One day in 1964 when Richard [Burton] was playing in Hamlet on Broadway, he and I were interviewed jointly in a private corner of an Eighth Avenue bar and restaurant much frequented by theatre people.

Richard Burton needed me, and, as I realised later, he set out to get me.

Richard Burton joined the Taibach Youth Centre, a youth drama group founded by Meredith Jones and led by Leo Lloyd, a steel worker and avid amateur thespian, who taught him the fundamentals of acting.

Richard Burton played the role of an escaped convict in Lloyd's play, The Bishop's Candlesticks, an adaptation of a section of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

The play did not have any dialogue, but Alpert noted that Richard Burton "mimed his role".

Richard Burton called the experience "the most hardworking and painful period" in his life.

In 1943, Richard Burton played Professor Henry Higgins in a school production of another Shaw play directed by Philip, Pygmalion.

Richard Burton thought the role was "a nothing part" and that he "hardly spoke at all".

Richard Burton was paid ten pounds a week for playing the role, which was "three times what the miners got".

In late 1944, Richard Burton successfully completed his six-month scholarship at Exeter College, Oxford, and went to the RAF classification examinations held in Torquay to train as a pilot.

Richard Burton was disqualified for pilot training because his eyesight was below par, and was classified as a navigator trainee.

Richard Burton served the RAF as navigator for three years, during which he performed an assignment as Aircraftman 1st Class in a Wiltshire-based RAF Hospital and was posted to the RAF base in Carberry, Manitoba, Canada, to work as an instructor.

Richard Burton was cast in an uncredited and unnamed role of a bombing officer by BBC Third Programme in a 1946 radio adaptation of In Parenthesis, an epic poem of the First World War by David Jones.

Richard Burton was discharged from the RAF on 16 December 1947.

Richard Burton was praised for his "acting fire, manly bearing and good looks" and film critic Philip French of The Guardian called it an "impressive movie debut".

Richard Burton had a bigger part as Robert Hammond, a spy for a newspaper editor in Green Grow the Rushes alongside Honor Blackman.

Biographer Bragg states the reviews for Richard Burton's performance in Waterfront were "not bad", and that Green Grow the Rushes was a box office bomb.

Glenville rejected him as he felt that Richard Burton was too short compared to Scofield.

Gielgud was initially uncertain about selecting Richard Burton and asked him to come back the following day to repeat his audition.

Richard Burton got the part the second time he auditioned for the role.

Writer and journalist Samantha Ellis of The Guardian, in her overview of the play, thought critics found Richard Burton to be "most authentic" for his role.

Richard Burton received the Theatre World Award for his performance, his first major award.

Richard Burton went on to perform in Henry V as the titular character, and played Ferdinand in The Tempest as a part of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre season as well.

Richard Burton began 1952 by starring alongside Noel Willman in the title role of Emmanuel Robles adventure Montserrat, which opened on 8 April at the Lyric Hammersmith.

The play only ran for six weeks but Richard Burton won praises from critics.

Richard Burton successfully made the transition to Hollywood on the recommendation of film director George Cukor when he was given the lead role in the Gothic romance film, My Cousin Rachel opposite Olivia de Havilland.

Richard Burton arrived in Hollywood at a time when the studio system was struggling.

Richard Burton first appeared in the war film The Desert Rats with James Mason, playing an English captain in the North African campaign during World War II who takes charge of a hopelessly out-numbered Australian unit against the indomitable German field marshal, Erwin Rommel, who was portrayed by Mason.

Richard Burton replaced Tyrone Power, who was originally cast in the role of Marcellus Gallio, a noble but decadent Roman military tribune in command of the detachment of Roman soldiers that were involved in crucifying Jesus Christ.

Crowther believed that Richard Burton was "stalwart, spirited and stern" as Marcellus.

Richard Burton was, in short, too bloody much, and not only that, she was totally ignoring me.

Bragg believed Richard Burton defied the studio system with this act when it would have been tantamount to unemployment for him.

At a party held at Simmons' residence in Bel Air, Los Angeles to celebrate the success of The Robe, Richard Burton met Elizabeth Taylor for the first time.

Richard Burton shared his anxiety with de Havilland whilst coming to terms with her.

Notwithstanding, Richard Burton began his thirty-nine-week tenure at The Old Vic by rehearsing for Hamlet in July 1953, with Philip providing expert coaching on how to make Hamlet's character match Richard Burton's dynamic acting style.

The play and Richard Burton's Hamlet were, on the whole, well received, with critics describing his interpretation of the character as "moody, virile and baleful" and that he had "dash, attack and verve".

Richard Burton's Hamlet was quite popular with the young audience, who came to watch the play in numbers as they were quite taken with the aggressiveness with which he portrayed the role.

At first, Richard Burton refused to play Coriolanus as he didn't like the character's initial disdain for the poor and the downtrodden.

Michael Benthall, who was renowned for his association with Tyrone Guthrie in a 1944 production of Hamlet, sought Philip's help to entice Richard Burton into accepting it.

Philip convinced Richard Burton by making him realise that it was Coriolanus' "lack of ambivalence" which made him an admirable character.

All five of Richard Burton's plays were directed by Benthall; three of those plays featured Bloom.

Richard Burton was an ardent admirer of poet Dylan Thomas since his boyhood days.

The entire cast of the radio play, including Richard Burton, did their roles free of charge.

Richard Burton reprised his role in the play's 1972 film adaptation with Taylor.

Richard Burton was involved in narrating Lindsay Anderson's short documentary film about The Royal School for the Deaf in Margate, Thursday's Children.

The personal magnetism Richard Burton had on the sound stage didn't come through the camera.

Shortly after the release of Prince of Players, Richard Burton met director Robert Rossen, who was well known at the time for his Academy Award-winning film, All the King's Men.

Richard Burton accepted Rossen's offer after the director reassured him he had been studying the Macedonian king for two years to make sure the film was historically accurate.

Richard Burton was loaned by Fox to the film's production company United Artists, which paid him a fee of $100,000.

Richard Burton faced the same troubles with playing character roles as before with Belch.

Time magazine critic derided The Rains of Ranchipur and even went as far as to say Richard Burton was hardly noticeable in the film.

Weiler of The New York Times called Richard Burton's rendering of Alexander "serious and impassioned".

Richard Burton returned to The Old Vic to perform Henry V for a second time.

Tynan made it official by famously saying Richard Burton was now "the next successor to Olivier".

In January 1956, the London Evening Standard honoured Burton by presenting to him its Theatre Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Henry V His success in and as Henry V led him to be called the "Welsh Wizard".

Richard Burton's stay at The Old Vic was cut short when he was approached by the Italian neorealist director Roberto Rossellini for Fox's Sea Wife, a drama set in World War II about a nun and three men marooned on an island after the ship they travel on is torpedoed by a U-boat.

Richard Burton's role was that of an RAF officer who develops romantic feelings for the nun.

Richard Burton admired Ray's Rebel Without A Cause and was excited about working with him, but unfortunately despite positive feedback, Bitter Victory tanked as well.

Richard Burton received his first Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination while Hayes won her second Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role as Richard Burton's mother, The Duchess of Pont-Au-Bronc.

In 1958, Richard Burton appeared with Yvonne Furneaux in DuPont Show of the Month's 90-minute television adaptation of Emily Bronte's classic novel Wuthering Heights as Heathcliff.

The film, directed by Daniel Petrie, aired on 9 May 1958 on CBS with Richard Burton garnering plaudits from both the critics and Philip, who thought he was "magnificent" in it.

Richard Burton was able to identify himself with Porter, finding it "fascinating to find a man who came presumably from my sort of class, who actually could talk the way I would like to talk".

The film, and Richard Burton's performance, received mixed reviews upon release.

In 1960, Richard Burton appeared in two films for Warner Bros.

Richard Burton received a fee of $125,000 for both films.

Richard Burton returned to the United States for the filming of John Frankenheimer's television adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's The Fifth Column.

Richard Burton provided narration for 26 episodes of The Valiant Years, an American Broadcasting Company series based on Winston Churchill's memoirs.

Richard Burton made a triumphant return to the stage with Moss Hart's 1960 Broadway production of Camelot as King Arthur.

Hart first came up with the proposal to Richard Burton after learning from Lerner about his ability to sing.

Richard Burton consulted Olivier on whether he should take the role, which came with a stipend of $4,000 a week.

Richard Burton immediately drafted Philip, who revised the musical's script and cut its running time to three hours while incorporating three new songs.

Richard Burton was generous and supportive to everyone throughout the production and coached the understudies himself.

Burton's reviews were excellent, with the critic from Time magazine observing that Richard "gives Arthur the skillful and vastly appealing performance that might be expected from one of England's finest young actors".

In 1962, Richard Burton appeared as Officer David Campbell, an RAF fighter pilot in The Longest Day, which included a large ensemble cast featuring: McDowall, George Segal, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Mel Ferrer, Robert Mitchum, Rod Steiger and Sean Connery.

Richard Burton was paid $250,000 for four months work in the film.

All that changed when, in their first scene together, Richard Burton was shaky and forgot his lines, and she soothed and helped him; it was at this instance, according to Taylor, that she fell for him.

In 1964, Richard Burton portrayed Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was martyred by Henry II of England, in the film adaptation of Jean Anouilh's historical play Becket.

Richard Burton asked the film's director, Peter Glenville, not to oust him from the project like he had done for Adventure Story before accepting the role of Becket.

Alpert believed Richard Burton's success was due to how well he varied his acting with the three female characters, each of whom he tries to seduce differently: Ava Gardner, Sue Lyon, and Deborah Kerr.

Richard Burton had accepted Cohen's offer under the condition that Gielgud would direct it, which he conveyed to Gielgud.

Gielgud agreed and soon production began in January 1964 after Richard Burton had completed his work in Becket and The Night of the Iguana.

The most successful aspect of the production, apart from Richard Burton's performance, was generally considered to be Hume Cronyn's performance as Polonius, winning him the only Tony Award he would ever receive in a competitive category.

Richard Burton himself was nominated for his second Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play but lost to Alec Guinness for his portrayal of the poet Dylan Thomas.

Richard Burton had a theory that Hamlet could be played a hundred ways, and he tested every one of them.

Alfred Drake, who played King Claudius, on how Richard Burton made variations to the character of Hamlet.

Richard Burton helped Taylor make her stage debut in A Poetry Reading, a recitation of poems by the couple as well as anecdotes and quotes from the plays Richard Burton had participated in thus far.

Richard Burton went on to star opposite Claire Bloom and Oskar Werner in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, a Cold War espionage story about a British Intelligence agent, Alec Leamas, who is sent to East Germany on a mission to find and expose a mole working within his organisation for an East German Intelligence officer, Hans-Dieter Mundt.

Ritt, a non-drinker, was displeased with Richard Burton's drinking habits as he felt it "lacked a certain discipline" and expected the same level of commitment from him as everyone else during filming.

Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader called the film "Grim, monotonous, and rather facile", he found Richard Burton's role had "some honest poignancy".

Variety thought Richard Burton fitted "neatly into the role of the apparently burned out British agent".

Richard Burton wanted Taylor for the character of Martha "to stop everyone else from playing it".

Richard Burton didn't want anyone else to do it as he thought it could be for Elizabeth what Hamlet was for him.

Richard Burton was not the first choice for the role of George.

Kaufman observed Richard Burton to be "utterly convincing as a man with a great lake of nausea in him, on which he sails with regret and compulsive amusement", and Taylor "does the best work of her career, sustained and urgent".

However, Andrew Sarris of The Village Voice criticised Taylor, believing her performance "lack[ed] genuine warmth" but his review of Richard Burton was more favourable, noting that he gave "a performance of electrifying charm".

Richard Burton starred as the titular character, Doctor Faustus while Taylor played her first stage role as Helen of Troy, a non-speaking part.

Richard Burton co-produced the film with Taylor and Coghill; it was critically panned and was a box office failure.

The film was a challenge for Richard Burton, who had to chase Taylor on rooftops, noting that he was "permitted to do extreme physical things that wouldn't have been allowed with any other actress".

In 1970, on his 45th birthday, Richard Burton was ceremonially honoured with a CBE at Buckingham Palace; Taylor and Cis were present during the ceremony.

Richard Burton attributed not having a knighthood to changing his residence from London to Celigny to escape taxes.

Richard Burton recognised his financial need to work, and understood in the New Hollywood era of cinema, neither he nor Taylor would be paid as well as at the height of their stardom.

Richard Burton did enjoy one major critical success in the 1970s with the film version of his stage hit Equus, winning the Golden Globe Award as well as garnering an Academy Award nomination.

In 1976, Richard Burton received a Grammy Award in the category of Best Recording for Children for his narration of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Richard Burton had an international box-office hit with The Wild Geese, an adventure tale about mercenaries in Africa.

Richard Burton returned to films with The Medusa Touch, Circle of Two, and the title role in Wagner.

Richard Burton had "heard stories" about Burton's heavy drinking, which had concerned the producers.

At the time of his death, Richard Burton was preparing to film Wild Geese II, the sequel to The Wild Geese, which was eventually released in 1985.

Richard Burton was to reprise the role of Colonel Faulkner, while Laurence Olivier was cast as Rudolf Hess.

Richard Burton has wonderful eyes, but she has a double chin and an overdeveloped chest, and she's rather short in the leg.

From 1983 until his death in 1984, Richard Burton was married to freelance production assistant Sally Hay.

Richard Burton acceded to Frosch's suggestion and moved with Sybil in January 1957 to Celigny, Switzerland, where he purchased a villa.

Richard Burton suggested that perhaps all actors were latent homosexuals, and "we cover it up with drink".

In 2000, Ellis Amburn's biography of Elizabeth Taylor suggested that Richard Burton had an affair with Olivier and tried to seduce Eddie Fisher, although this was strongly denied by Richard Burton's younger brother Graham Jenkins.

The publication of these articles coincided with what would have been Churchill's centenary, and came after Richard Burton had played him in a favourable light in A Walk with Destiny, with considerable help from the Churchill family.

Politically Richard Burton was a lifelong socialist, although he was never as heavily involved in politics as his close friend Stanley Baker.

Richard Burton admired Democratic Senator Robert F Kennedy and once got into a sonnet-quoting contest with him.

In 1972, Richard Burton played Leon Trotsky in The Assassination of Trotsky.

Richard Burton courted further controversy in 1976 when he wrote an unsolicited article for The Observer about his friend and fellow Welsh thespian Stanley Baker, who had recently died from pneumonia at the age of 48; the article upset Baker's widow with its depiction of her late husband as an uncultured womaniser.

Richard Burton admired and was inspired by the actor and dramatist Emlyn Williams.

Richard Burton employed his son, Brook Williams, as his personal assistant and adviser, and he was given small roles in some of the films in which Burton starred.

Richard Burton was allegedly inebriated while making the movie, and many of his scenes had to be filmed with him sitting or lying down due to his inability to stand upright.

Richard Burton later said that he could not remember making the film.

Richard Burton suffered from bursitis, possibly aggravated by faulty treatment, arthritis, dermatitis, cirrhosis of the liver, and kidney disease, as well as developing, by his mid-forties, a pronounced limp.

In 1974, Richard Burton spent six weeks in a clinic to recuperate from a period during which he had drunk three bottles of vodka a day.

Richard Burton was a chain smoker, with an intake of between three and five packs a day for most of his adult life.

Richard Burton died from intracerebral haemorrhage on 5 August 1984 at his home in Celigny, Switzerland, at the age of 58.

Richard Burton was buried at the Old Cemetery of Celigny with a copy of Dylan Thomas's poems.

Richard Burton left an estate worth US$4.58 million.