Richard Burton

Richard Walter Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. on 10 November 1925 in Pontrhydyfen, Glamorgan, Wales, the twelfth of thirteen children in a Welsh-speaking family. His father, Richard Walter Jenkins Sr., worked as a coal miner, and his mother, Edith Maude Jenkins, died on 31 October 1927 from postpartum infections, six days after the birth of the family's thirteenth child. Burton was not yet two years old at the time of her death. Following her passing, his elder sister Cecilia, known to him as Cis, and her husband Elfed James took him into their home on Caradoc Street in Taibach, a district of Port Talbot, where he lived until the age of seventeen. His brother Ifor, nineteen years his senior and both a miner and rugby union player, was another formative presence in his early life and helped cultivate Burton's deep interest in rugby. Welsh rugby centre Bleddyn Williams later observed that Burton had shown distinct possibilities as a player.

Burton attended Eastern Primary School from the age of five and later passed a scholarship examination to enter Port Talbot Secondary School in March 1937, becoming the first member of his family to attend secondary school. He demonstrated an exceptional speaking and singing voice from childhood, winning an eisteddfod prize as a boy soprano. His schoolmaster Philip Burton became a pivotal figure in his development, tutoring him intensively in academics and working to refine his acting voice through rigorous practice, including outdoor voice drills. Philip later recalled that Burton's voice, though initially rough, became memorably beautiful through sustained work. Burton credited Philip with giving him everything, and Philip described him as a son in all but name. Burton made his earliest theatrical appearance in a school production of George Bernard Shaw's The Apple Cart and later took a role in Philip's BBC Radio adaptation Youth at the Helm in 1942.

Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor during the 1950s, and his baritone voice became one of his most recognized attributes. His Broadway career spanned from 1950 to 1983 and encompassed a range of productions. Among his earliest recognized stage work was his appearance in Time Remembered, for which he received the Theatre World Award in 1951. He went on to perform in the play Hamlet, a production that critic Kenneth Tynan described as evidence that Burton was the natural successor to Laurence Olivier. His portrayal of Hamlet in 1964 was widely regarded as one of the defining performances of his career.

Burton received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical in 1961 for his portrayal of King Arthur in the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot, which had opened in 1960. His additional Broadway credits include the play Private Lives and Equus, the latter of which also became a film for which he received one of his seven Academy Award nominations. Despite those seven nominations — for My Cousin Rachel, The Robe, Becket, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Anne of the Thousand Days, and Equus — he never won the Academy Award. He did, however, receive a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy Award among his career accolades.

By the mid-1960s Burton had become a top box-office star, and by the late 1960s he ranked among the highest-paid actors in the world, commanding fees of one million dollars or more plus a percentage of gross receipts. His personal life, particularly his relationship with actress Elizabeth Taylor — whom he married twice and divorced twice — kept him a constant subject of public attention. His heavy drinking contributed to a reputation, noted by critics and colleagues alike, of a performer of exceptional gifts who had not fully realized his potential. He continued to work on Broadway through 1983 and died on 5 August 1984.