As Richard Burton appears on screen in kaleidoscopic colour, dressed in full armour and atop a horse, he is applauded by the adoring masses. The narrator proclaims, “In ten short years, he has conquered the world.” As it happens, he’s talking about Burton’s character, Alexander the Great, in the eponymous movie, but the words could apply to the actor himself.
Why then, if you say the name “Richard Burton”, does a life of drama and diamonds immediately come to mind, one spent jumping between yachts and private jets in the glare of the paparazzi lens and, of course, a double marriage to Elizabeth Taylor? Because that’s all true, too. Burton was the primus inter pares of Britain’s still beloved mid-century stars, alongside the likes of Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris, Oliver Reed and co – a group of talented actors for whom the term “hellraiser” became a shorthand, as famous for their reckless real-life behaviour as for their undoubted dramatic talents. What was the unifying element, and why do they still bewitch us?
Michael Sheen sympathetically describes the pull between Burton’s loves – stage versus screen, devoted first wife Sybil versus passionate lover Elizabeth, Wales versus the universe – asking if drink was the escape. Whatever, it must have turned all of these world-class performers into crashing bores and hell to live with. Siân Phillips remembers one drunken rage culminating in her husband O’Toole demanding she be packed and gone from the house in two hours.
Burton was always fascinated by Faustus, the man who traded his soul for power, riches and the most beautiful woman in the world, but the fate of Icarus would seem just as pertinent. The ones who flew not quite as high – Albert Finney, Michael Caine – went on to enduring greatness and happy, long lives. Anthony Hopkins, now sober for 50 years, has twice played the Lear that Burton never did.
Certainly, nobody, at least that we know about, behaves like this in 2025, which is no doubt a relief for all studio executives, pub landlords and stars’ loved ones. But it means, as Kenneth Branagh says, almost wistfully, “No one is going to tell stories about us in 50 years’ time.” Was it all worth it? Harris would say so: “At least you knew I was here.”
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