From a mining village in South Wales to the great stages and screens of the world, Richard Burton carried a voice that could make Shakespeare sound like a conversation, and a presence that filled any room.
Richard Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins on 10 November 1925 in Pontrhydyfen, Wales, the twelfth of thirteen children in a coal-mining family. Encouraged by his teacher Philip Burton, whose surname he later took, he won a scholarship to Oxford and began acting on stage. After service in the Royal Air Force, he made his film debut in The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949).
Hollywood came calling with The Robe (1953), in which he played Marcellus Gallio, and he was nominated for Best Actor. On stage, his Hamlet and his work in Look Back in Anger (1959) confirmed a classical actor of rare power. The 1960s brought his greatest fame: Cleopatra (1963) opposite Elizabeth Taylor, Becket (1964) as Thomas Becket, The Night of the Iguana (1964), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) as George opposite Taylor.
Burton was nominated for seven Academy Awards without winning, a statistic that says more about the Academy than about him. His later work, including Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) as Henry VIII and Equus (1977) on stage and screen, showed a performer still willing to take risks.
He died on 5 August 1984 in Switzerland, aged 58. What remains is that voice, rich, Welsh and unmistakable, and a body of work that still shakes anyone who hears it.
Image credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_Burton_-_The_Robe.jpg