Richard Burton

Born Richard Walter Jenkins on November 10, 1925, in a small village in Wales called Pontrhydyfen, young Richard grew up in a disadvantaged environment. He is the twelfth of thirteen children of Richard and Edith Jenkins. He grew up in a community of minors of the Presbyterian faith, where Welsh is the mother tongue. At the age of two, he lost his mother; it is then his older sister, Cecilia, who takes care of him and brings him up. Richard proved to be a good student very early on, passionate about poetry and writing, endowed with an excellent memory. But he was forced to stop his schooling at the age of sixteen in order to work and provide for his large family. His school teacher, Philippe Burton, who recognizes his obvious talent in him, then tries to adopt him but fails; young Richard not yet of legal age. Whatever: eternally grateful for giving him a chance to continue his studies, young Richard takes the surname of Burton, in tribute to his mentor and surrogate father. At the age of 18, Richard Burton is allowed to return to theExeter College in Oxford, for a six-month course.

In the 1940s and early 1950s, Burton began working on stage and in film in Great Britain. He thus earned his first acting fee by doing a voice for a BBC radio program, while he made his professional stage debut in Liverpool in a play by Emlyn Williams. Thirsty for recognition and culture, he always walks around with a bag full of biographies, story books, the complete Shakespeare and other dictionary of quotes. In 1947, he moved to London and quickly shot his first film, The Last Days of Dolwyn.

While appearing on stage in London and New York in The Lady's Not For Burning, alongside the illustrious John Gielgud and Claire Bloom, Burton continues a small series of minor films until 1952, when he finally meets consecration. On the recommendations of the great novelist Daphné Du Maurier, he was offered a role in the film Ma cousin Rachel by Henry Koster, where he gave the reply to Olivia de Havilland. The intensity of his acting, his perfect diction, his charisma and his piercing gaze worked wonders with the public, who gave the film a triumphant reception, and earned the actor a citation for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. In 1953, he partnered with James Mason in The Desert Rats; classic war film in which he plays a captain of the British army trying to face German Marshal Erwin Rommel. The same year, he caused a sensation by replacing Tyrone Power at short notice as a Tribune in the Peplum The Tunic, where he opposed the cruel Emperor Caligula. The film, which marks the beginning of the era of Bible Peplums, earns Burton his second Oscar nomination, for Best Actor this time around.

Despite a successful start, Burton did not meet the same success in the following films during the fifties: Prince of Players and especially Alexander the Great were critical and commercial failures. Just like the adaptation of La monsson, based on Louis Bromfield's river novel. He alternates with the boards where he played Othello and Henry V Shakespeare. After settling in Switzerland, he returned to the cinema, under the watchful eye of Roberto Rossellini's camera with Sea Wife, then filmed in 1958 under the direction of British director Tony Richardson in Les Corps Sauvages. Half-success at the Box Office, the film remains a powerful social drama in which Burton delivers a performance of which he feels proud.

After having triumphantly played King Arthur on Broadway for six months in the musical show "Camelot" in 1961, he replaced Stephen Boyd in the role of Marc Antoine in Cleopatra. Ruinous production of the Twentieth Century FoxAt a budget of $ 40 million, the film brings the studio to the brink of bankruptcy. But it is also with this film, which will remain in the Top 10 of the most profitable works during the four following years, that the career of Burton takes off. It was during the filming of Cleopatra that Richard will indeed meet Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he will maintain a more than stormy and highly publicized affair. Married in 1964 after a respective divorce, they give the answer in The Night of the Iguana by John Huston, in which the actor plays a defrocked priest. If the film is a critical and public triumph, the tension between the actors on the set is extreme, to the point that the young Sue "Lolita" Lyon, 18, will explain a few years later.

If Burton toured regularly with Elizabeth Taylor in the post-Cleopatra years, with The Knight of the Sands (1965), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? under the direction of Mike Nichols (1966) or La Mégère apprivoisée which he produced (1967), it is in the films where he frees himself from the actress that he undoubtedly gives the best of himself. Let us quote an impeccable Thomas Becket in the eponymous film where he has for partner Peter O'Toole, brilliant Spy who came from the cold at Martin Ritt (1965), and member of the commando formed with Clint Eastwood in the classic When the eagles attack in 1968. With Stanley Donen's The Staircase in 1969, the actor was at the height of his fame: his cachet amounted to the record sum of $ 1.25 million.

Insomniac, notorious alcoholic, and die-hard womanizer, Burton begins to pay dearly for the excesses of his private life. After a first divorce pronounced on June 26, 1974, Richard and Elizabeth Taylor remarried on October 10, 1975, and divorced again on August 1, 1976. Spending without counting, and having to provide for the needs of his (very) large family, he demonstrated much less acuity in the choice of his roles. We thus find him in the forgettable Bluebeard (1972), Hammersmith is Out (1972) or L 'Homme du clan (1974), on which he spends his days drinking with his companion in misfortune Lee Marvin. Hospitalized at the end of filming because of his blood alcohol level, the actor barely manages: he drank three bottles of vodka a day.

In 1977, he succeeded not without difficulty in convincing the producers of Equus to entrust him with the title role of Dr. Martin Dysart. Fearing that his alcoholism has seriously damaged the actor's ability to play, they force him to shoot in the meantime in The Exorcist 2 - the heretic - a film hated by Burton -, and to play the role of psychiatrist on the boards on Broadway, the time of a replacement. Burton proves brilliant there, and his performance even earned him a Tony Award. His composition in the film, consumed by a true inner fire alongside young Peter Firth, is extraordinary, and remains one of the best roles of Burton's career. Two years later, he shot Les Oies sauvage. The film is very successful in Europe and Great Britain, much less in the United States. His last appearance was also a success, in the 1984 adaptation after George Orwell. The only actor who agreed to return to Les Oies sauvage II, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage the day before he left to shoot on August 5, 1984 in Céligny, not far from Geneva. He was 58 years old.

Author: Olivier Pallaruelo

Richard Burton 's estimated Net Worth, Salary, Income, Cars, Lifestyles & many more details have been updated below.

Let's check, How Rich is Richard Burton in 2020 ?

Richard Burton Net Worth 2021

Richard Burton 's revenue is $1.4M in 2021. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Burton and could vary in the range between $647.8K - $1.5M.

Richard Burton Net Worth 2020

Richard Burton 's revenue is $1.8M in 2020. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Burton and could vary in the range between $667.7K - $1.7M.

Richard Burton Net Worth 2019

Richard Burton 's revenue is $1.9M in 2019. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Burton and could vary in the range between $688.4K - $1.8M.

Richard Burton Net Worth 2018

Richard Burton 's revenue is $1.4M in 2018. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Burton and could vary in the range between $524.4K - $1.9M.

Richard Burton Net Worth 2017

Richard Burton 's revenue is $1.7M in 2017. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Burton and could vary in the range between $852.8K - $2M.

Richard Burton Net Worth 2016

Richard Burton 's revenue is $1.3M in 2016. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Burton and could vary in the range between $760.5K - $1.2M.

Richard Burton Net Worth 2015

Richard Burton 's revenue is $1.7M in 2015. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Burton and could vary in the range between $758.5K - $1.5M.

It is an overall forecast for the net worth of Richard Burton. The evaluation covers the latest 5 years and an approximation for next year. See above to learn how much money does Richard Burton makes a year.

The range above shows an estimation based on evaluation generated by public information about sponsorships or other sources found on the internet. It's summarized data from Richard Burton's projects existing in AidWiki's repository. It's an approximation of the revenue compiled by AidWiki and may not correspond with the real amount.