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Richard Burton, CBE (10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh multiple award-winning actor. He was at one time the highest-paid actor in Hollywood.

Childhood and education

Richard Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in the village of Pontrhydyfen, Wales, UK, near Port Talbot. He grew up in a working-class, Welsh-speaking household, the twelfth of thirteen children.BBC Biography His father was a short, robust coal miner, a “twelve-pints a-day man” who sometimes went off on drinking and gambling sprees for weeks. Burton later claimed, by family telling, that “He looked very much like me...That is, he was pockmarked, devious, and smiled a great deal when he was in trouble. He was, also, a man of extraordinary eloquence, tremendous passion, great violence”.Hollis Albert, Burton, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1986, p.23, ISBN 0-399-13093-4