Richard Burton
Actor
Richard Walter Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. on 10 November 1925 at 2 Dan-y-bont, Pontrhydyfen, a small mining village in the Afan Valley of West Glamorgan. He was the twelfth of thirteen children. His father, Richard Jenkins Sr., was a coal miner known to the family as Daddy Ni — a twelve-pints-a-day man who went off on drinking sprees and was largely absent. His mother Edith died in 1927 when Richard was just two years old. He was taken in and raised by his elder sister Cecilia, who became, in his own words, more of a mother than any mother could ever have been.
The decisive figure in his life was Philip Burton, a schoolmaster at Port Talbot Secondary School who recognised Richard's exceptional gifts and became his guardian in 1943 — allowing Richard to take his surname and the future Richard Burton was born. Philip drilled Shakespeare and poetry into him, taking him to the hillsides above Port Talbot to recite verse aloud to improve his voice projection. Burton would later say he would rather have played for Wales at Cardiff Arms Park than Hamlet at the Old Vic — but it was the stage that claimed him.
Spotted by the playwright Emlyn Williams in a school production, Burton made his professional stage debut in Williams's The Druid's Rest in 1943. He spent a short period at Oxford before serving in the RAF, and in 1948 made his film debut as Gareth in Williams's The Last Days of Dolwyn, a part written specially for him. On set he met Welsh actress Sybil Williams, whom he married in 1949. His theatre career accelerated rapidly — by the early 1950s he was being compared to Laurence Olivier, whom critic Kenneth Tynan called him the natural successor to.
