Richard Walter Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor.
Noted for his powerful presence and baritone voice, Burton had an expansive film and stage career. He made his feature film debut in the British drama The Last Days of Dolwyn in 1949 and gained attention for his role as Philip Ashley, the protagonist in the romantic mystery My Cousin Rachel earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
On stage, Burton established himself as a Shakespearean actor, starring in roles such as roles such as Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 1 (1951) and Henry IV, Part 2 (1951), Henry V of England in Henry V (1951), Ferdinand in The Tempest (1951), Prince Hamlet in Hamlet (1953), Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (1953), Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus in Coriolanus (1953), and Othello in Othello (1955). He was called "the natural successor to Olivier" by critic Kenneth Tynan. Burton's perceived failure to live up to those expectations disappointed some critics and colleagues; his heavy drinking added to his reputation as a great performer who had wasted his talent.
Throughout his career Burton received numerous accolades, including a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Grammy Award. He received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of King Arthur in the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot (1960). Despite seven Academy Award nominations Burton failed to win an Oscar; he was nominated for his performances in My Cousin Rachel (1952), The Robe (1953), Becket (1964), The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) and Equus (1977).
Burton has remained closely associated in the public mind with his second and third wife, Elizabeth Taylor due to their publicly turbulent relationship, in which they married and divorced twice, and starred in eleven films together.
Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. on 10 November 1925 in a house at 2 Dan-y-bont in Pontrhydyfen, Glamorgan, Wales. He was the twelfth of thirteen children born into the Welsh-speaking family of Richard Walter Jenkins Sr. (5 March 1876 – 25 March 1957), and Edith Maude Jenkins (née Thomas; 28 January 1883 – 31 October 1927). Jenkins Sr., called Daddy Ni by the family, was a coal miner, while his mother worked as a barmaid at a pub called the Miners Arms in the village where she met her husband. They married, without approval of her parents, at Neath Register Office on 24 December 1900. Biographer Melvyn Bragg quoted Burton as saying that Daddy Ni was a "twelve-pints-a-day man" who sometimes went off on drinking and gambling sprees for weeks, and that "he looked very much like me". Jenkins Sr. was badly burned in a mining explosion. His father, Thomas Jenkins, also a miner, had also had a serious mining accident and had relied on a wheelchair.
Burton described his mother as "a very strong woman" and "a religious soul with fair hair and a beautiful face". But he was not quite two years old when she died on 31 October 1927, six days after the birth of Graham Jenkins, the family's thirteenth child. Edith's death was a result of postpartum infections; Burton believed it had occurred because of "hygiene neglect". According to biographer Michael Munn, Edith "was fastidiously clean", but her exposure to the dust from the coal mines resulted in her death. Following Edith's death, Richard's elder sister Cecilia, whom he affectionately addressed as "Cis", and her husband Elfed James, also a miner, took him under their care until the age of seventeen. Richard 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".
Burton remained grateful and loving to Cis throughout his life, later going on to say: "When my mother died she, my sister, had become my mother, and more mother to me than any mother could ever have been ... I was immensely proud of her ... she felt all tragedies except her own". Daddy Ni would occasionally visit the homes of his grown daughters but was otherwise absent. Another important figure in Richard's early life was Ifor, his brother, 19 years his senior. A miner and rugby union player, Ifor "ruled the household with the proverbial firm hand". He was also responsible for nurturing a passion for rugby in young Richard. Although Richard also played cricket, tennis, and table tennis, biographer Bragg notes rugby union football to be his greatest interest. On rugby, 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 the young Richard "had distinct possibilities as a player".
From the age of five to eight, Richard Jenkins was educated at the Eastern Primary School in Port Talbot, and he attended the boys' segment of the same school from eight to twelve years old. In March 1937, he took and passed a scholarship exam for admission into Port Talbot Secondary School Biographer Hollis Alpert notes that both Daddy Ni and Ifor considered Richard's education to be "of paramount importance" and planned to send him to the University of Oxford. Richard became the first member of his family to go to secondary school. He displayed an excellent speaking and singing voice from childhood, even winning an eisteddfod prize as a boy soprano. While a pupil at Port Talbot Secondary School, Richard also showed immense interest in reading poetry as well as English and Welsh literature. He earned pocket money by running messages, hauling horse manure, and delivering newspapers.
In 1939, Richard was bolstered by winning a certificate at Maesteg Town Hall during a local eisteddfod and wanted to repeat his success. He chose to sing Sir Arthur Sullivan's "Orpheus with his Lute" (1866), which biographer Alpert thought "a difficult composition". He requested the help of his schoolmaster, Philip Burton, but his voice cracked during their practice sessions. This incident marked the beginning of his association with Philip. Philip later recalled, "His voice was tough to begin with but with constant practice it became memorably beautiful." Richard made his first foray into theatre with a minor role in his school's production of the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw's The Apple Cart. He decided to leave school by the end of 1941 and work as a miner like Elfed. However, he ended up with a job, which he came to dislike intensely, at the local Taibach Co-operative retail store as a draper's assistant in the menswear department, limited at that time by war-time rationing. He also simultaneously considered other professions for his future, including boxing, religious ministry and singing. It was also during this period that Richard took up smoking and drinking despite being underage.
When he joined the Port Talbot Squadron 499 of the Air Training Corps section of the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a cadet, he re-encountered Philip, who was the squadron commander. He also 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 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 Misérables. The play did not have any dialogue, but Alpert noted that Richard "mimed his role". Philip gave him a part in a radio documentary/adaptation of his play for BBC Radio, Youth at the Helm (1942). Seeing the talent Richard possessed, both Jones and Philip re-admitted him to school on 5 October 1942. Philip tutored his charge intensely in school subjects and also worked at developing the youth's acting voice, including outdoor voice drills which improved his projection. Richard called the experience "the most hardworking and painful period" in his life. Philip called Richard "my son to all intents and purposes. I was committed to him", while Burton later wrote of Philip, "I owe him everything".