The Full Biography
Richard Burton. Actor. The miner’s son who made a Welsh voice into a climate, then spent two marriages to the same woman proving the climate was also a thirst.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man next to Elizabeth Taylor, a yacht, a diamond, a voice that could make a shopping list sound like the Old Testament. What the still cannot show is Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. of Pontrhydyfen, twelfth of thirteen in a miner’s house, a schoolmaster named Philip Burton who gave him a name and a verse, and a fifty-eight-year-old who died in Céligny with the drink already in the file and the voice still the most expensive instrument in the room.
He was born on November 10, 1925, in Pontrhydyfen, in the Afan valley of South Wales. His father, Richard Walter Jenkins Sr. — Dic to the pit — was a coal miner and a drinker. His mother, Edith Maude, died in 1927, when the boy was two. The sister Cecilia, Cis, took him to Port Talbot and raised him as her own. The house was crowded. The future was the mine. Teachers saw a brain and a throat and fought to keep him in school. Philip Burton, who taught English at Port Talbot Secondary, heard the voice and decided it was a life. He worked the boy on the hills above town, shouting Shakespeare into the wind so the vowels would carry. In 1943 he became the legal guardian. The boy took the surname by deed poll. Richard Burton is a teacher’s gift. Jenkins remains the certificate.
Oxford, briefly: an RAF short course at Exeter College, a miner’s son among the stones, reading as if the library were a second pit. Then the Royal Air Force, 1944 to 1947, a navigator. The stage was already waiting. Emlyn Williams’s The Druid’s Rest, a Welsh play for a Welsh throat. The Old Vic. Stratford. In 1951, as Prince Hal at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, the critic Kenneth Tynan heard the next Olivier in a Welsh mouth and said so in print that still gets quoted. In 1953 the Old Vic Hamlet was a night the town still names — not a pretty Dane, a coal-country intelligence in black. He had a voice that arrived fully armed and a face the cameras would know what to do with before they knew what to do with the man. He married Sybil Williams, a fellow Welsh actor, in 1949. Two daughters: Kate, who would become an actress of real seriousness, and Jessica. Hollywood found the voice. The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949) had already put him on film in a drowned Welsh village. My Cousin Rachel (1952), opposite Olivia de Havilland, brought a first Oscar nomination. The Robe (1953), the first CinemaScope saint, brought a second. The Desert Rats. Alexander the Great (1956), a Macedonian he was born to look like and not yet old enough to play. He was already a star. He was not yet a climate.
Look Back in Anger (1959) put the voice in John Osborne’s kitchen, a Jimmy Porter who did not have to fake the class wound. In 1960 Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot, on Broadway, made him King Arthur opposite Julie Andrews and won him a Tony. “How to Handle a Woman” sat in a throat that had been trained on a Welsh hill; the show was a medieval cartoon and he made the king a man. He could have stayed a great British stage animal and died respected. He did not. Becket (1964), with Peter O’Toole, is the picture serious rooms still name when they want the actor without the yacht: a friendship, a murder, a cathedral, two voices that could fill a nave. Then Cleopatra (1963), shot in Rome at a cost that became a civic scandal, and Elizabeth Taylor, who was already a climate and still married to Eddie Fisher when the cameras began to eat the two of them alive. The Vatican called the affair erotic vagrancy. The studios called it a headache. The public called it a serial. They married on March 15, 1964, in Montreal. They divorced in 1974. They married again on October 10, 1975, in Botswana. They divorced again in 1976. The world treated the marriages as a sport. The pictures treated them as a firm.
The V.I.P.s (1963), fogged in at a London airport, the first picture they made as a couple the public could buy a ticket to watch. The Sandpiper (1965), Big Sur, a minister and a woman the church could not file. The Night of the Iguana (1964), from Tennessee Williams, a defrocked priest sweating in Mexico, a part that sat close to the thirst. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Mike Nichols directing from Edward Albee, a night of a marriage that is also a wound: George and Martha in a New England living room, two nominations, a film that remains after the diamonds have been catalogued. Taylor won. He did not. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), from le Carré, a tired agent in a black-and-white Cold War, another nomination, the best argument that the voice could do silence as well as verse. The Taming of the Shrew (1967), for Zeffirelli, Petruchio and Kate as a sport they already knew. Doctor Faustus, an Oxford labor he produced and starred in, Marlowe spoken by a man who still believed language was the only thing. Where Eagles Dare (1968), with Clint Eastwood, the war picture that still plays on holiday television. Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), as Henry VIII, another nomination. They were, for a stretch, the most complete celebrity the 1960s hired: a voice and a face the cameras could not stop eating. He was nominated seven times and did not win. The drink was not a rumor. It was a schedule.
I rather like my reputation, actually, that of a spoiled genius from the Welsh gutter, a drunk, a womanizer; it’s rather an attractive image.Richard Burton
He said he liked the image. The work sometimes survived it and sometimes did not. The verse always did. He recorded Dylan Thomas as if Thomas were a relative, which, in the Welsh mouth, he almost was. Under Milk Wood is a second career in a booth. People who never saw Hamlet still have that voice in the house. He bought Taylor the Krupp diamond and a Cartier stone so large he joked it had so many carats it was almost a turnip. The joke is in every clip. The recordings are the better inheritance. The thirst is in the file. So is the labor of a man who could drink a night and still hit the consonants in the morning, until the morning no longer came.
The turn is Taylor, and the decision to live the climate in public. A lot of great voices stay on the stage and die respected. He took the yacht. He took the thirst. He also took George and Martha and a Hamlet the old men still name. Fond memory that keeps only the diamond is a cleaned room. A pile-on that keeps only the bottle is a different cleaned room. The verse is the file.
Six things most people never knew
- Jenkins is the certificate. Pontrhydyfen. A miner’s twelfth child. Burton is a teacher’s gift, taken by deed poll in 1943.
- Philip Burton is the door, not a studio. A schoolmaster. Hills above Port Talbot. Shakespeare shouted into the wind so the vowels would carry.
- Seven nominations, no competitive Oscar. Rachel, The Robe, Becket, The Spy, Virginia Woolf, Anne, Equus. The voice did not need the envelope. The man would have liked it.
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is the picture that outlasts the yacht. 1966. Nichols. Albee. A marriage as a wound.
- They married twice. 1964 and 1975. The sport was the world’s. The firm was theirs.
- He died in Céligny at fifty-eight. A hemorrhage. The drink is in the file. He was buried in red, with Dylan Thomas.
Kate, from the first marriage, has had to share a father who is a voice and a yacht. She learned the trade honestly and has spent a career proving the name is also work. Jessica’s life was harder and is not a public exhibit. Friends from the Old Vic describe a professional who could drink a night and still hit the verse at call, until the call came and the verse was late. Sybil raised the girls through the first fame and the first Taylor weather. The Burton in a Swiss village was a man who had already been a climate and was now a neighbor with a famous throat. Both are the life.
The later years
The remainder was shorter than the legend and more specific than the gossip. After the second divorce from Taylor he married Susan Hunt in 1976 — Suzy, who had been married to the racing driver James Hunt — and, for a stretch, tried a quieter house. He had already, in those middle seventies, taken work the yacht years would have refused. The Klansman. The Voyage. Villain. Some of it is a paycheck. Some of it is a man who still needed to be in front of a camera because the alternative was a glass. In 1976 he went back to Broadway in Peter Shaffer’s Equus, taking over a part Anthony Hopkins had owned, a psychiatrist circling a boy and a crime, a serious room he still knew how to fill. The notices were grateful. The 1977 film, directed by Sidney Lumet, brought the seventh Oscar nomination. He did not win. Richard Dreyfuss did, for The Goodbye Girl. He had stopped expecting the envelope. He kept taking work that would have him. Exorcist II: The Heretic is in the file. So is a television Brief Encounter. So is The Wild Geese (1978), a mercenary picture that made money. The voice could still dignify a page that did not deserve it.
He and Hunt divorced in 1982. In 1983 he married Sally Hay, a production assistant he had met on a television set, and the marriage held until the end. She was the household that got him to Céligny and kept the glass from being the only companion. That same year he went back on a stage with Taylor in Noël Coward’s Private Lives, a reunion the public treated as a sport and the two of them treated, unevenly, as a job. The tour made money. The notices were mixed. He also played Wagner for television, a long German labor, and took parts in pictures that will not be revived for the acting. In 1984 he played O’Brien in Michael Radford’s film of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, opposite John Hurt’s Winston Smith. It is a cold, exact piece of work, a last serious room: the voice used as an instrument of the state, not a yacht accessory. He had been preparing a Broadway Camelot revival. He did not reach it. He was already ill in ways the public had filed under drink. The body had been used. A spinal condition, years of cigarettes, the thirst — the file is not a single cause. It is a ledger.
Home, when he could choose it, was Le Pays de Galles in Céligny, a Swiss village that let a famous throat be a neighbor. He read. He kept Thomas in the house. He wrote in notebooks that have since been published as diaries — a drinker’s ledger, a reader’s ledger, a man arguing with himself about wasted time. He did not get a long knighthood lap. He got a village, a last marriage, a last Orwell, and a hemorrhage. On August 5, 1984, a cerebral bleed took him at fifty-eight. Sally was the household. He was buried in the old cemetery at Céligny, in red, with a copy of Dylan Thomas. Kate read “Do not go gentle into that good night” at the service. The recordings of the verse — the poetry albums, the radio, Under Milk Wood — are the elder career he actually left. The tapes did not stop when the throat did.
People who wanted only the diamond missed the last rooms on purpose. He had given them a sport and a thirst. He had also given them George, a tired spy, an Arthur, a Hamlet, and a Welsh boy’s vowels trained on a hill. The remainder is a village grave and a voice that still fills a kitchen when someone puts the record on. That is enough, and it is not enough, and both of those sentences are true.
After he was gone
Every famous couple since still pays them a tax. Every Hamlet since still steals the vowels. Taylor still arrives in the same sentence. The sentence is the right double bill. Virginia Woolf is the correction. Pontrhydyfen is the first room. In 2025, on the centenary, blue plaques went up at the birth house and at the Port Talbot house where Philip Burton made a voice. The plaques are accurate. The tapes are better.
He came out of a miner’s house, took a teacher’s name, made a robe and a yacht and a wound of a marriage, lost seven envelopes, and died in Switzerland with the voice still the most expensive thing in the room. If you only remember the diamond, you have the still. If you remember Jenkins, Philip, George and Martha, and Céligny, you have him.
Portrait: 20th Century Fox · Public domain (PD-US, pre-1978 no notice) · via Wikimedia Commons