Richard Burton
This article is about Richard Burton, the 20th-century actor. Click here if you are looking for Richard Francis Burton, the 19th-century explorer, scholar, and orientalist.
Richard Burton (November 10 1925 - August 5 1984) was a Welsh actor from the late 1940s through the 1980s. An insomniac and heavy drinker, Burton was married twice, consecutively, to Elizabeth Taylor. Burton and Taylor played opposite each other in Mike Nichols' filming of the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which a bitter erudite couple spend the evening trading vicious barbs in front of their horrified and fascinated guests. The film is reputed to have been not dissimilar from Burton and Taylor's real-life marriage.
Burton was banned permanently from BBC productions in 1974 for his questioning the sanity of Winston Churchill and others in power during World War II--Burton reported hating them "virulently" for the promise to wipe out all Japanese people on the planet.
Films include: