Richard Burton regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation was born 100 years ago. His memorable performance as Hamlet in 1964 cemented his promise as “the natural successor to Olivier”. His failure to live up to those expectations disappointed many with his heavy drinking and much-publicised turbulent relationship with Liz Taylor leading to regret about a great performer who had wasted his talent.
In his middle years he was smoking 100 cigarettes a day and drinking three to four bottles of hard liquor a day as well. He said that he turned to the bottle for solace “to burn up the flatness, the stale, empty, dull deadness that one feels when one goes offstage”. His unhealthy lifestyle led in his forties to cirrhosis of the liver and kidney disease. He died at 58.
He was born 10 November 1925 3pm Neath, Wales, the twelfth of thirteen children with a coal miner father who was also a heavy drinker and gambler, and a barmaid mother who died when he was two years old. Richard was subsequently brought up by his elder sister. He was the first member of his family to go to secondary school and had an excellent speaking and singing voice, with an interest in poetry as well as English and Welsh literature. A school master Philip Burton took him under his wing and nurtured his singing and acting talent.
He had a depressive and intense 8th house exact Sun Saturn conjunction in a creative Water Grand Trine to a 12th house Uranus in Pisces trine Pluto in Cancer in his 4th, with his Pluto opposition Jupiter in Capricorn – a mix of emotional overload, self-doubt and supreme confidence. His charming Venus in Capricorn was in his career 10th trine a Virgo Moon which sat with his Neptune in Leo in his 6th house of health. A 6th house Moon can connect emotional state to physical wellbeing – and a 6th house Neptune needs to treat health with kindness, abuse of any kind has a damaging impact.
He also had a wide yod of Mars in his 7th sextile Neptune inconjunct his Uranus.
A talented and tormented man.
His relationship with his schoolmaster Philip Burton, 30 November 1904, was the pivotal one in his life with Philip Burton’s Uranus falling on his pupil’s Midheaven and his Pluto square Richard Burton’s Uranus and his Jupiter in RB’s 1st – a catalyst who bolstered the youngster’s confidence and sent his life on a different track.
Burton’s relationship with Liz Taylor was hardly well-starred with her Scorpio Moon conjunct his 8th house Sun Saturn and his Virgo Moon conjunct her Neptune and opposition her Sun, Mercury, Mars in Pisces.
Their relationship chart had a controlling/possessive composite Sun Mercury opposition Pluto which did not sit well with her need-for-constant-change Venus Uranus conjunction in Aries or his troubled-loner temperament. It also had a cruel-treatment, short-fused Mars Saturn conjunction. Couldn’t live with each other or without. Two marriages, two divorces.
I’m not altogether convinced about her 2.30am birth time 27 February 1932 London (it is marked as birth certificate except England did not normally record birth times). It explains certain things with a powerfully influential 8th house Pluto in a disruptive square to Venus Uranus in Aries in her 4th pointing to a constantly changing domestic life. But it says little about the health problems which plagued her life. She was a Sun Mars Mercury in Pisces opposition Neptune so well suited to the film business. And her Jupiter in flashy Leo clearly appreciated the high-life.
Add On: One week before he died at 59, Richard Burton poured his heart onto paper for Elizabeth Taylor—just eight months after he’d married Sally Hay, and in the final year they never saw each other again. When Liz returned to her California home after his funeral in Switzerland, she found this letter waiting for her:
“I want to know how you are, my hatred, my face and my cross, my shadow and my light, my dove and my raven…
It’s Sunday afternoon. I drink… My loneliness is a great empty house, as useless as this one.
If you could answer me… if it’s not too late for this drunken sailor longing for his harbor…
You are like rain and memory, clear and dark, weapon and wound, false and beautiful, burning and cold…
There is no life without you.
You are the bone and the vein, murky and clear, the wall and the ivy, the grass that will kiss my grave.
Deep down, we were never apart. And I think we never will be…”
Wowsa.! That is some letter. I doubt La Liz ever got over that.
Phillip Burton wasn’t much older than Richard, but old enough to become his foster father. In any event it was an inappropriate relationship. And Richard admitted later that it was a gay relationship. As to how consensual it was is unknown. But without Burton as his guardian, Richard would have been in a desperate situation.
As far as I know, all further romantic relationships were with women. But I seem to remember him in a film where he played a gay gangster with Ian McShane as his love interest who was trying to leave Burton for a young woman with whom he had formed an attachment. In a strange way it was as though McShane was playing Burton as a young man. Though Philip Burton was a teacher not a gangster. And I assume the film was meant to mimic the Krays, famous twin brothers who were gangsters in the 60s London. Ronnie was gay. And I suspect his brother was as well. But he married a woman who later died in suspicious circumstances.
‘Villain’ is the film.
The Guardian wrote an article about it:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/26/villain-review-richard-burton-dick-cement-ian-la-frenais
The film was called ‘Villain’, 1971. I tried to post a link earlier – it’s a Guardian article by Peter Bradshaw about the film, but this website won’t let me for some unknown reason. Bradshaw writes:
‘Burton is the psychopathically violent gangster Vic Dakin, who runs a firm in west London and is tempted to try his luck in the unfamiliar discipline of armed robbery – director Michael Tuchner choreographs a spectacular scene when this turns into a car-crashing fiasco. Burton’s ruined handsomeness is uniquely disturbing, with that angle-grinder voice of his sneering and snarling with contempt; his broad face with its beady eyes and faintly pursed lips is a death mask of pure hostility.
‘Villain has maybe been neglected because of a potential argument about homophobia; in some ways it appears to resemble Basil Dearden’s lowlife crime drama Victim, only without the “issue” pretext that made that brilliant film palatable. But the smug and hypocritical heterosexual family-man world of Draycott in this film is at least as bad. Villain is a classic.’
Wow, thanks Virgoflake! I really appreciate your input. Villain was a great film with great actors.
Richard was superb in the
unsettling “Whose Afraid Of
Virginia Wolff”, and the
extremely amusing
“The Taming Of The Shrew”.
Both films featured his wife
Liz Taylor. At the very peak
of their powers, they were a
force to be reckoned with.
It beggars belief he never
won an award in his short,
turbulent lifetime.
One assumed he was warned that his bad habits would lead to an early demise and ignored the warnings. I suppose he couldn’t help himself. What a shame! Even Liz took the cure and she was a Pisces (prone to escapism of all forms).
Wonderful actor. He had the same Water Grand Trine as my father who sadly also became addicted to alcohol. My first Richard Burton film was ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’, the Albee play with Elizabeth Taylor. I couldn’t look away, they were electric!
It’s an absolute travesty that he was never awarded an oscar.
I once owned (long since gone) an LP of Burton’s Hamlet – a masterclass! In my humble opinion, Burton was head and shoulders above Olivier as an actor. Burton’s characters were authentic, whereas Olivier was sometimes over the top and a bit ‘hammy’. But I sometimes think people are born into the wrong family and that provides a stimulus or challenge to achieve more than you might expect.
There’s a copy of the 4LP version up on Youtube “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4uZrna_lFM”
Have to say I love the occasional listen to Jeff Wayne’s War of the World with Burton’s narration.
I also enjoy a spot of War of the Worlds now and then! But for a magical listen, Burton reading Dylan Thomas is really special. There’s a selection online. Thomas was another Welsh Scorpio, with Sun trine Saturn/Pluto trine Nodes in Pisces. A tormented soul too, but so compelling.
Thank you Marjorie. Liz Taylor had so many health probs too-a broken spine I think which gave her agony forever. What a flammable pair they were (her 5th husband! ahem something wrong there missus). Ah well all the good guys are dead then….
Quick thought: There’s that Mars in the 12th at the Aries Point in the composite chart. They had a lot of hidden behaviors going on between the two of them. They married and divorced twice.