Richard Burton

Welsh actor (1925–1984)

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Lived 1925–1984, aged 59United Kingdom

United Kingdom ActorsActor

Wikipedia
77 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1925–1984
Aged 59
Known for
The Longest Day
1962

Summary

Updated 2026-08-28

Seven Oscar nominations, zero wins. A voice that could fill any theater and a Hamlet critics still measure others against — yet the story always tilts toward what didn't happen, the laurels just out of reach, and the two marriages to Elizabeth Taylor that kept the cameras rolling long after the curtain dropped.

Biography

About

Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. was born in Wales on 10 November 1925 and became Richard Burton, a Shakespearean force in the 1950s with a baritone that Kenneth Tynan believed marked him as "the natural successor to Olivier." His 1964 Hamlet was the performance by which others would be judged. The Academy nominated him seven times — for My Cousin Rachel in 1952, The Robe in 1953, Becket in 1964, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold in 1965, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966, Anne of the Thousand Days in 1969, and Equus in 1977 — but never gave him the statue. By the mid-1960s he was a box-office…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Richard Burton

Richard Burton

said1983

She can do everything…there’s nothing she can’t do...she looks after me so well. Thank God I’ve found her.

— About Sally Hay whom he married in 1983, in Life: Richard Burton.

Richard Burton

said1967

My father considered that anyone who went to chapel and didn't drink alcohol was not to be tolerated. I grew up in that belief.

— In Playboy Interviews, Playboy Press, 1967, p. 100

Richard Burton

saidundated

If I had a chance for another life, I would certainly choose a better complexion...

— In "Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star"

Richard Burton

saidundated

You reach the top of the heap, but it's a circle, and you slip on the down side; maybe for years. You get scared. He said then he thought he was coming out of a slump.

— In "Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star"

Richard Burton

saidundated