Burton, Richard Walter

Burton, Richard Walter [ Richard Walter Jenkins] (1925–84), Welsh actor of great power and presence, son of a miner, who took his stage name from that of his benefactor Philip Burton. He made his début in Emlyn Williams's The Druid's Rest (1944) and later appeared in three plays by Christopher Fry—The Lady's not for Burning (1949; NY, 1950), The Boy with a Cart, and A Phoenix Too Frequent (both 1950). In 1953–4 he was at the Old Vic, his roles including Hamlet, the Bastard in King John, Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, Caliban in The Tempest, and Othello and Iago alternately with John Neville. In New York he was seen in Anouilh's Time Remembered (1957), in the musical Camelot (1960), and in a Hamlet (1964) of 138 consecutive performances in Gielgud's production, which broke Gielgud's own record. He appeared with the Oxford University Dramatic Society in a production of Marlowe's Dr Faustus (1966). In 1976 he starred in Peter Shaffer's Equus in New York, where in 1983 he also played opposite his former wife Elizabeth Taylor in Coward's Private Lives. His career latterly was mainly in films.