Trivia

He was on a flight to California from Mexico, when he ran into a young man interested in acting. Burton encouraged him to pursue it full time during their conversation. That young man was Kevin Costner, who promptly left his marketing job to pursue an acting career.

He was well-known for his many acts of extraordinary generosity. For example, during the filming of crowd scenes for Wagner (1983), he noted that one of the extras would, during breaks in shooting, be in constant floods of tears. He discreetly inquired the reason for this and was told that she was newly-widowed and penniless and had taken the job as an extra in a desperate bid to raise money to pay her mortgage. That same week, she found that her mortgage had been paid off in full by Burton, to whom she had never even spoken.

Died shortly after the filming of 1984 (1984) was completed. He was in terrible health during filming from years of alcoholism and heavy smoking, and had to wear a neck brace during rehearsals.

Was famous for his high intelligence and for being incredibly well-read. Burton was widely admired for his command and understanding of English poetry, which he taught for a term at Oxford University in the early 1970s.

Was a drinking partner of Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole until O'Toole was forced to give up drinking after surgery in 1976.

He once got into a contest with Robert F. Kennedy, whom he greatly admired, in which they tried to out-do the other by quoting William Shakespeare's sonnets. Both were word-perfect, and Burton was forced to "win" the contest by quoting one of the sonnets backwards.

The twelfth of thirteen children, he insisted that his way out of an impoverished Welsh childhood was due not to acting, but to books.

His movie contracts contained a clause that he did not have to work on the 1st of March, St David's Day, the day honoring the patron saint of Wales.

He was engaged to Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia (Serbia & Montenegro) between the time of his two marriages to Elizabeth Taylor. Princess Elizabeth is the mother of Catherine Oxenberg whom he later coached on acting.

In Italy for the filming of Cleopatra (1963), he became so frustrated with the numerous delays during its production, he begged Darryl F. Zanuck for a part in The Longest Day (1962) just so he could do some work.and was given a cameo role of an RAF pilot. Roddy McDowall who was also filming Cleopatra did the same and ended up with a small role as an American soldier.

While starring as King Arthur in the musical "Camelot" in 1961, Burton told his co-star Julie Andrews that she was his only leading lady he had not slept with.

When Burton died, the headline on the front page of The Times, "Richard Burton dies at 58: 'Career madly thrown away'", caused offense to his family, judging by his brother Graham's biography. In fact it was a paraphrase of a more diplomatic statement by his mentor John Gielgud, who was quoted as saying, "He was serious, charming, with tremendous skill. I feel nothing but sadness. He was a born actor but he was a bit wild and chose a rather mad way of throwing away his theatre career. He was awfully good to people and generous".

In 1969, Richard Burton bought his second wife Elizabeth Taylor one of the world's largest diamonds from the jeweller Cartier after losing an auction for the 69-carat, pear-shaped stone to the jeweller, which was won with a $1 million bid. Aristotle Onassis also failed in his bid to win the diamond, which he intended to give his wife Jacqueline Kennedy. The rough diamond that would yield the prized stone weighed 244 carats and was found in 1966 at South Africa's Premier mine. Harry Winston cut and polished the diamond, which was put up for auction in 1969. Burton purchased the diamond from Cartier the next day for $1,069,000 (approximately $6 million in 2005 dollars) to give to Elizabeth Taylor. The small premium Cartier charged Burton was in recognition of the great publicity the jewellery garnered from selling the stone, which was dubbed the "Burton-Cartier Diamond", to the then-"world's most famous couple". Ten years later, the twice-divorced-from-Burton Elizabeth Taylor herself auctioned off the "Burton-Taylor Diamond" to fund a hospital in Botswana. The last recorded sale of the "Burton-Taylor Diamond" was in 1979 for nearly $3,000,000 to an anonymous buyer in Saudi Arabia. The ring was the centre of the classic Here's Lucy (1968) episode "Lucy Meets the Burtons" in 1970, in which Lucy Carter, played by Lucille Ball, gets the famous ring stuck on her finger. The actual ring was used and the episode was the highest rated episode of the very popular series.

His attack on Sir Winston Churchill in 1974 was widely thought to have been occasioned by the fact that he was, at the time, engaged to Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia - who was, of course, a princess in exile. She blamed Churchill and other western leaders for giving away her country to the Communists at the end of World War II. Burton's engagement to her was soon broken off.

He was forced to drop out of the Los Angeles run of "Camelot" in April 1981 due to crippling back pain, most likely caused by his chronic bursitis. Doctors at the hospital couldn't understand how he had managed to entertain live audiences night after night. His entire spinal column was found to be coated in crystallized alcohol. At first the doctors couldn't operate because Burton was three stone underweight, so he had to remain in bed to build up his strength. His backbone was rebuilt in a delicate operation that could easily have left him paralyzed for life if something had gone wrong. Burton called his friend Richard Harris to replace him as King Arthur, and then returned to his home in Switzerland to recover.

His younger brother Graham Jenkins worked for the BBC and was responsible for getting Burton the job of narrating the Royal Wedding of 'Prince Charles' and Princess Diana for BBC Radio on 29 July 1981. There had been some concern that Burton would say something controversial, given his past attacks on Churchill. However, as it turned out he made only one mistake during the five hour broadcast.

He was a close friend of Humphrey Bogart.

He took his professional name from his schoolmaster and tutor, Philip Burton, who took the 17-year old Richard Jenkins and groomed him for success, both academically and as an actor. The two became so close, Burton attempted to adopt him as his son, but was prevented from doing so as he was too young, under the law. Nevertheless, Jenkins, who became known to the world as Richard Burton, considered Philip Burton his adopted father and honored him by taking on his surname. Years later, when Philip Burton met Elizabeth Taylor and she asked Philip Burton how he came to adopt her soon-to-be fifth (and later sixth) husband, Richard piped up, "He didn't adopt me! I adopted him!".

Spoke Cymraeg (Welsh-language) as mother tongue.

Had two daughters by his first wife, Sybil Williams. Actress Kate Burton (born 1957) and Jessica (born 1961), who was diagnosed as profoundly autistic and would eventually be institutionalized.

While filming 1984 (1984), he suffered from a terrible pain in his neck and had to wear a neck brace during rehearsals. He had to wear heavy make up in the film, since the director felt he looked twenty years older than his age. He minimized his famous voice for the part of O'Brien, although he had great difficulty remembering the lines and would sometimes require nearly forty takes to get a scene right. The result was one of his most critically acclaimed performances, and well as his most underplayed.

He once shared the record with Peter O'Toole for the most Oscar acting nominations (7) without a single win. In 2007, that record was broken, when O'Toole was nominated and lost yet again for the film Venus (2006).

By chance he ran into Bernard Lee in a pub in 1972. Lee was in a bad state, having lost his wife in a fire, been mugged, out of work for two years and had a drinking problem. Upon hearing of Lee's problems, gave him a cheque for $6,000 to clear his debts, together with a note saying that everyone has a spot of trouble once in a while. Burton's gift assisted Lee in overcoming his depression.

He had smoked since he was eight, reaching five packs of cigarettes a day in middle age.

Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 1, 2013 at 6336 Hollywood Boulevard, next to Elizabeth Taylor's star.

Suffered from acute insomnia.

Marlon Brando became quite friendly with Burton's wife Elizabeth Taylor while shooting Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). Marlon Brando agreed to pick up her Best Actress Award for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) from the New York Film Critics Circle. When Marlon Brando made his appearance at the NYFCC Award ceremony at Sardi's on January 29, 1967, he hectored the critics, querying them as to why they hadn't recognized Elizabeth Taylor before. He then flew to Dahomey, Africa where Elizabeth Taylor was shooting The Comedians (1967) with Burton to personally deliver the award, a development Burton thought odd. Later in the 1960s, Marlon Brando' socialised with the Burtons, visiting them on their famous yacht the Kalizma, while they plied the Mediterreanean. Marlon Brando's ex-wife Anna Kashfi, in her book "Brando for Breakfast" (1979), claimed that Marlon Brando and Burton got into a fist-fight aboard the yacht, probably over Elizabeth Taylor, but nothing of the incident appears in Burton's voluminous diaries. In his diaries, Burton found Marlon Brando to be quite intelligent but believed he suffered, like Elizabeth Taylor did, from becoming too famous too early in his life and believed their affinity for one another was based on this. (Both Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando would later befriend Michael Jackson, another superstar-cum-legend who had become too famous too soon.) Burton recognized Marlon Brando as a great actor, but felt he would have been more suited to silent films due to the deficiency in his voice (the famous "mumble"). As a silent film star, Burton believed Marlon Brando would have been the greatest motion picture actor ever.

His mother died when he was two-years old. He was taken in and raised by his older sister, Cis, and her husband in the same Port Talbot, Wales, neighborhood where fellow Welshman Anthony Hopkins later lived in as a child. "I shone in the reflection of her green-eyed, black-haired gypsy beauty," Burton said of his sister/surrogate mother.

He had an excellent memory and had no difficulty remembering lines until he was fifty. However when he starred in "Equus" on Broadway in 1976 he had great difficulty learning the lines. Burton had not acted on stage for twelve years. He turned down offers to play "King Lear" on stage in Canada in 1978 and 1983 because he said he could no longer remember lines.

Circa 1970, Burton's fellow Celt (and cinema superstar) Sean Connery, who had received excellent reviews for his portrayal of the doomed king in a 1960 Canadian television version of "Macbeth", hoped to launch a big-screen version of the Scottish play. Sean Connery's plans were foiled when Roman Polanski's version went into production for Hugh Hefner's Playboy Productions. Burton, who had won a reputation as the best "Hamlet" of his generation, was also interested in launching a film version of "Macbeth" at the same time. He had just had a great cinema success in the period piece Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), for which he won his sixth and penultimate Oscar nomination, and he told his friend Sir Laurence Olivier that he wanted to make a movie of "Macbeth" with himself as the eponymous king and his wife Elizabeth Taylor as Lady Macbeth. Burton's plans came to naught for the same reason as Sean Connery's did. A decade earlier, Sir Laurence Olivier - the greatest "Macbeth" of the 20th Century - had also failed to bring the play to the big screen. The future Lord Laurence Olivier had hoped to film his own version of the play in the late 1950s, but the failure of his movie Richard III (1955) to make back its money frustrated his plans. Producer Mike Todd, Elizabeth Taylor's third husband, told Laurence Olivier in 1958 that he likely would produce the film with Laurence Olivier as "Macbeth" and Laurence Olivier's real-life wife, Vivien Leigh, as his Lady, but that hope died in the plane crash that claimed Mike Todd's life. Thus, the famous "Macbeth" curse adversely affected three of the greatest actors of the 20th Century.

Since Elizabeth Taylor had been sterilized in 1957 (at age 25, after giving birth to three children), she and Eddie Fisher adopted a German orphan, Maria (born 1961) in 1962. Fisher surrendered his parental rights before they divorced and Richard adopted the girl as his daughter, legally re-naming her Maria Burton.

During World War II, he was admitted to Exeter College, Oxford to take the "University Short Course" for six months as a Royal Air Force cadet. While at Oxford in 1943-1944, he was a member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. Cadets were promised that they could return to Oxford to complete their education after the war, but he did not, instead becoming a professional actor after being demobilized in 1947. Almost thirty years later, he was invited back to Oxford to teach poetry to undergraduates for a semester.

He died on Sunday, August 5, 1984, less than a week before he was due to begin shooting Wild Geese II (1985), a sequel to his successful mercenary thriller The Wild Geese (1978), made in 1978. He was the only actor returning for the film and, as Colonel Allen Faulkner, would have led a team of crack mercenaries to spring aged Nazi Rudolf Hess from Spandau Prison in Berlin. Burton's death caused huge problems for producer Euan Lloyd, the man behind the original The Wild Geese (1978) and its follow-up, Wild Geese II (1985). With the rest of the cast (Scott Glenn, Barbara Carrera and Laurence Olivier (playing Hess)) in place, Euan Lloyd had just a handful of days to find a replacement for Burton. He selected British actor Edward Fox, who joined the cast as Alex Faulkner, Burton's brother. Burton's no-show in the film was explained by one character telling Edward Fox that they'd heard his famous warrior brother had died. The film was dedicated to Burton's memory.

His last surviving sibling, younger brother Graham Jenkins, died in December 2015 aged 88.

According to Melvyn Bragg's biography (that was based on Burton's own diaries) in 1959, he turned down an offer of $350,000 (approximately $2.25 million in 2005 terms) to star as "Christ" in Nicholas Ray's remake of King of Kings (1961) due to superstition. A Welsh-Irish drunkard had read the palms of Burton and some friends, including Dylan Thomas, who were performing poetry on B.B.C. Radio's "Third Programme" and were waiting for show-time in a local pub. The drunk predicted the friends' deaths, which in the case of Dylan Thomas, was accurate. After two other friends died within their prescribed time frames, Burton (who had been told he would die at the age of 33) decided to take the year 1959 off so as not to tempt fate. Although he thought Nicholas Ray might make a good film and was keen to shoot on location in Spain, Burton, who already was a millionaire and did not need the money, turned the offer down. For the same reason, he also turned down the role played by Audie Murphy in John Huston's The Unforgiven (1960), which was shot in Durango, Mexico.

His friend Laurence Olivier tried to interest him in taking over the National Theatre after his imminent retirement from the post. He declined, feeling that the board of directors had treated the great Laurence Olivier shabbily.

He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1970 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama. He collected this award on his 45th birthday with his older sister Cis, who raised him as a child, and his wife Elizabeth Taylor.

His divorce from third wife Susan Hunt, whom he was married to from 1976 to 1982, entailed a settlement of $1 million (approximately $2 million in 2005 terms) and a house he owned in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (his first house in Puerto Vallarta was lost to second wife Elizabeth Taylor during his first divorce from her).

According to Burton's diaries, when he and Elizabeth Taylor appeared on the Here's Lucy (1968) (episode: "Lucy Meets the Burtons"), he was appalled by the tedium of shooting the show. He found Lucille Ball's meticulous professionalism to be ludicrous as he felt it was out of place on a TV show. Lucy was entirely focused on making the show work, and Burton -- who thought it would be a lark -- didn't have any fun on the set. He was quite impressed by Ball's co-star Gale Gordon, but was dismayed that Lucy, personally, directed him to play his "part" -- which was himself, after all -- very broad so that he was shouting. When he did shout, she told him that he was finally playing comedy as it should be played. The episode featured Lucy meeting Burton, who was fleeing the press and hid in her office, and then Liz, and putting on Liz's 69-carat, pear-shaped stone diamond, which became stuck to her her finger.

According to his long-time friend Brook Williams, the son of the man who had given Burton his first professional break Emlyn Williams, Burton turned down a role in The Sea Wolves: The Last Charge of the Calcutta Light Horse in 1980, which reunited The Wild Geese (1978) director Andrew V. McLaglen, screenwriter Reginald Rose and co-star Roger Moore. The Wild Geese (1978) had been a big hit (Burton was always popular and a box office draw in military roles) and Andrew V. McLaglen had directed Burton's post-The Wild Geese (1978) film Breakthrough (1979), but Burton turned it down. Brook Williams believed that Burton's third wife, Susan Hunt, didn't want Burton away on a lark with his old friends (and drinking companions) as he was in frail health and battling alcoholism at the time.

Where Eagles Dare (1968) was his last major hit at the box office. The Wild Geese (1978) was successful in Europe but completely flopped in North America.

Once claimed he would much rather have played rugby for Wales than Hamlet on stage.

He and his then wife Elizabeth Taylor were very close friends with the famous president of Yugoslavia (Serbia), Marshall Josip Broz Tito. They spent many vacations with him at his villa on the Yugoslavian Adriatic coast line as well as being a frequent guest at his mansion in Belgrade. He later played his close friend in the 1972 Yugoslavian film The Battle of Sutjeska (1973) (The Fifth Offensive).

According to his biography "And God Created Burton", he was a notorious womanizer; during his marriage to Sybil Williams he had affairs with Claire Bloom, Jean Simmons, Maggie McNamara, Lee Remick, Lana Turner and Mary Ure, and during his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor he had affairs with Geneviève Bujold, Nathalie Delon and Raquel Welch.

Planned on going back to the stage to appear in William Shakespeare's "Richard III" and "King Lear". His staging of "Richard III" would have been based on the ideas of his step-father, Philip Burton, to bring together all of William Shakespeare's dramatization of Richard, Duke of Glouster (later Richard III) from the "Henry VI" trilogy. Burton had planned on visiting his step-father in Florida in early 1985 to work on the project.

In a 1977 interview with Vincent Kane, describing a five-year period which he barely remembers because of his heavy drinking, Burton recounts introducing himself to 'a very distinguished actor... an American' at a party and the other actor replying, 'Kid, we did a film together! Lasted four months!' The gravelly voice he puts on sounds very like that of Lee Marvin, with whom he made The Klansman (1974) shortly before drying out.

He always wore built up shoes in films and in real life.

He and Elizabeth Taylor starred together in 11 movies: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966); The V.I.P.s (1963); Under Milk Wood (1971); The Taming of The Shrew (1967); The Sandpiper (1965); Hammersmith Is Out (1972); Doctor Faustus (1967); Divorce His - Divorce Hers (1973); The Comedians (1967); Cleopatra (1963) and Boom! (1968).

Recorded his sessions for the Jeff Wayne's musical version of "The War of the Worlds" in two afternoon sessions in New York between film making.

An article Burton wrote in memory of his longtime friend, Sir Stanley Baker, following the actor's death in June 1976, caused so much offence that Baker's widow, Lady Ellen Martin, considered suing Burton. However, shortly afterwards, she recalled standing near the tree where Baker's ashes had been scattered and hearing his voice saying, "You know what Rich is like when he's in his cups".