Rich Fact
At Hollywood parties Burton used to silence guests by reciting speeches from Henry IV and V backwards or in Welsh.
Rich Fact
At the height of the Burton-Taylor publicity, Burton had to exercise his dogs on the roof of the New York building they were rehearsing Hamlet in.
Rich Fact
The chairman of the House of Immigration Subcommittee asked the State Department to revoke Mr Burton’s visa because he was ‘detrimental to the moral youth of our nation.’
Rich Fact
Richard Burton was the youngest Henry V in Radio (1949).
Rich Fact
Together with Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton holds the record for the most Oscar nominations (seven) without a single win.
Rich Fact
In 1949, on £20 per week for The Lady’s Not For Burning, Richard bought 42 seats for 42 Welsh miners and his family to watch the play.
Rich Fact
He was given the only present he ever wanted - a complete edition of the Everyman Library. Five hundred volumes, all rebound in graduating shades of leather.
Rich Fact
Richard was made an honorary fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford in 1975.
Rich Talk
He said of his talent: ‘I don’t know what it is. If I ever started to know I might lose it.’
Rich Talk
‘If you are going to make rubbish, be the best rubbish in it.’
Rich Talk
He said of Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra: ‘I didn’t realize that she was so fucking famous.’
Rich Talk
Frank Rich, New York Times drama critic: ‘The actor doesn’t merely command the stage he seems to own it by divine right’. Camelot revival, July 1980.
Rich Talk
‘I rather like my reputation actually, that of a spoiled genius from the Welsh gutter, a drunk, a womanizer: it’s rather an attractive image.’.
Rich Talk
‘My idea of a good living is to buy a mine in Wales. I’ll get all my brothers to work for me and the money will roll in forever.’.
Rich Talk
‘I live in Switzerland for the security.’
Rich Talk
‘Everybody should pay them (taxes) except actors.’
Rich Talk
A critic said of his 1964 Hamlet: ‘One of the greatest actors in one of the greatest roles at the peak of his career’.
Rich Talk
‘When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn’t know how to play them when I was drunk.’
Rich Talk
Laurence Olivier to Richard at the height of the scandal surrounding his affair with Elizabeth Taylor: ‘make up your mind, dear heart. Do you want to be a great actor or a household word?’ ‘Both’ he replied.
Rich Talk
‘I’ve done the most awful rubbish in order to have somewhere to go in the morning.’
Rich Talk
‘I would rather have played for Wales at Cardiff Arms Park than Hamlet at The Old Vic.’
Rich Talk
‘All great art comes from people who are either ugly or have a terrible inferiority complex. I know no one who is beautiful and produces art.’
Rich Talk
‘Two-and-a-half to three bottles of hard liquor a day... fascinating idea, of course, drink on that scale. It’s rather nice to have gone through it and to have survived.’
Rich Talk
Richard Burton on Sybil Williams: ‘I’ve met this marvelous girl.’
Rich Talk
Richard Burton on Elizabeth Taylor: ‘The most astonishingly self-contained, pulchritudinous, remote, removed, inaccessible woman I have ever seen.’
Rich Talk
Richard Burton on Susan Hunt: ‘I turned around and there was this beautiful creature about nine feet tall. She could stop a stampede.’
Rich Talk
Richard Burton on Sally Hay: ‘Dear Sally, or dearest Sally or most beloved Sally or undo-without-able-Sally or lovely Sally... dress up for me this evening or rather dress down and let’s see what happens’.
