Want to know the best Richard Burton movies? How about the worst Richard Burton movies? Curious about Richard Burton’s box office grosses or which Richard Burton movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Richard Burton movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Richard Burton (1925-1984) was a 7 time Oscar® nominated Welsh actor. After gaining fame as the next “Laurence Olivier” of stage, Burton moved to Hollywood and almost immediately had great success. His IMDb page shows 77 acting credits from 1946-1984. This page ranks 46 Richard Burton movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies not released in North America were not included in the following table.
Drivel part of the page: This page comes from a request by Albert. We had about 60% of these movies already in our database…so we figured it was going to be a fairly easy page to research. His movies from 1953 to 1968 were very popular and very easy to research. However when Burton reached the 1970s his career pretty much fell off the cliff. After 1970 only 2 of his movies cracked our Top 25. His Equus (1977) got good reviews and his final Oscar® nomination…but tanked at the box. His Exorcist 2 (1978) earned some money at the box office but is considered one of the worst movies ever made. So if you are wondering why so many of his later movies have almost no box office…most (Wild Geese & 1984 did ok) were low budget barely seen movies.
Richard Burton Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Richard Burton movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Richard Burton movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Richard Burton movies by domestic yearly box office rank or by trivia for that movie
- Sort Richard Burton movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Richard Burton movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Richard Burton movie won.
- Sort Richard Burton movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Richard Burtonl Table
- Fifteen Richard Burton movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 32.60% of his movies listed. Cleopatra (1963) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Richard Burton movie grossed $83.00 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 22 Richard Burton movies are rated as good movies…or 47.82% of his movies. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) is his highest rated movie while Boom! (1968) is his lowest rated movie.
- Fifteen Richard Burton movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 32.60% of his movies.
- Nine Richard Burton movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 19.56% of his movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 60.00. 19 Richard Burton movies scored higher that average….or 41.30 of his movies. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) got the the highest UMR Score while Doctor Faustas (1967) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Richard Burton
1. Richard Walter Jenkins was born in the village of Pontrhydyfen, Neath Port Talbot, Wales in 1928. He was the 12th of 13 children.
2. Phillip Burton was Richard’s school master and mentor. Burton eventually took Burton surname as his stage name…and thus Richard Jenkins became Richard Burton
3. Currently two Richard Burton movies are in the Top 50 Adjusted Box Office Hits of All-Time. 1953’s The Robe is in 47th place and 1963’s Cleopatra 42nd place.
4. Richard Burton was nominated for 7 Oscar® …but he never won. His 7 nominations are the second most without winning. First? Burton’s Beckett co-star, Peter O’Toole who received 8 nominations without winning.
5. Richard Burton was nominated for 7 Golden Globes®…winning twice. He won a Golden Globe® for 1952’s My Cousin Rachel and 1977’s Equus.
6. Richard Burton was married 5 times. His most famous marriage was to Elizabeth Taylor. They were married twice…from 1964 to 1974 and 1975 to 1976. Burton and Taylor would make 11 feature films together. Burton had three children. His daughter, Kate, is an actress with over 80 IMDb credits.
6. Richard Burton sang in the backup chorus for “Rocket to Stardom” on Kris Kristofferson’s 1975 album “Who’s to Bless . . . Who’s to Blame.”
7. Richard Burton appeared in six films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar®: 1953’s The Robe, 1962’s The Longest Day, 1963’s Cleopatra, 1964’s Becket, 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and 1969’s Anne of the Thousand Days.
8. Richard Burton had 3 movies on Variety’s Top Rental Films of 1963 list. Cleopatra was 2nd, The Longest Day was 3rd and V.I.P.s was 7th.
9. In 1968, Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood starred in Where Eagles Dare. The movie had some many stunts done by stuntmen that Eastwood referred to the movie as “Where Doubles Dared.”
10. Check out Richard Burton‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
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For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
I loved him in Becket but he was excellent in “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woofe”. He should have gotten an Academy Award for at least one of his movies. I loved him as King Arthur in the Broadway play of CAMELOT although I only saw excerpts on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was 12 yrs old. Lived his acting, his tremendous voice his accent his style and his personality. My favorite actor.
Too bad his Camelot performance was not filmed liked his Hamlet role was. His performance in Va Woolf is awesome,,,but it is not my favorite Burton movie….gotta go with Beckett and Where Eagles Dare as a light Burton movie to watch.
I was disappointed that R.B. did not portray King Arthur in the movie version as well but he was involved with Liz Taylor
which changed his life completely. I must admit, Richard Harris made a perfect King Arthur and happy he got the part.
I agree Harris was very good in Camelot…but I think Burton would have been better…that was at the peak of Burton’s career…would have been classic!
I think Becket was.
Beckett is a classic….in my ranking equation Beckett finished 4th of 46 movies.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was his best work, IMO
Statistically Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is his best movie…and probably the closest he came to winning an Oscar.
Hi
Burton was an incredible talent, his voice alone was incredible. I’ve seen quite a few of his movies, although it didn’t get great reviews, I always enjoyed Cleopatra. The Robe was a big success and opened doors in Hollywood for him.
But I never liked Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? Too dark and depressing. I lately watched on youtube him and Elizabeth Taylor on The Lucy Show. It was very funny. But apparently behind the scenes, the atmosphere was quite frosty.
Lucille Ball was a real perfectionist and she tried to advise Burton on how to do comedy. Needless to say it didn’t go down too well He was unfortunate with the Oscars, but at least he got nominated.
Hey Chris. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts on Mr. Burton. When you look at the first two movies you mentioned….combined they grossed over a billion dollars just in North America….with those numbers…it is safe to say lots of people liked Cleopatra and The Robe. Virginia Woolf is not a fun movie to watch at all. Interesting about the behind the scenes stuff at I Love Lucy. 7 nominations is good….he and O’Toole are like the Buffalo Bills of American football…..been to the finals many times but not got the big award.
Burton was a wooden film actor who shouted too much.
Hey Mark. Thanks for the visit and the comment. I think it is safe to say when Burton was good he was very good….but when he was bad….he was a huge ham. Too bad the Razzies were not around during the 1970s…I think he would have won some of those awards.