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.
Richard Burton, is the # 32 most connected actor of the 1960’s, and the # 94 most connected of the 1970’s.
He was either incredible or god awful in his movies. No middle ground.
Hey Herbie….interesting point on Mr. Burton. I agree he has performances on both side of greatness and horribleness….but with so many movies…..,he has hit the middle ground a few times too….lol. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts on Richard Burton.
1 Burton courted controversy throughout his career from his perceived scandalous relationship with Liz Taylor to his outspoken comments such as when he reportedly told a room full of movie critics at a film launch “I loathe the lot of you!”
2 He was once asked who he considered were the greatest movie performers of his day and virtually heckling the interviewer into agreeing with his choices he said “Brando [his often social companion] and of course my Elizabeth [his wife].” Ah the impartiality of those Brits!
3 VIDEO COMMENTS
(1) Fine closing still of Richard before the booze got to him
(2) As usual many excellent posters that were new to me and I will randomly highlight Alexander the Great, Desert Rats, Becket and a truly amazing one for Night of Iguana
(3) He and Liz jointly appeared in 11 cinematic movies and you have included 8 of them for which your overall average marking is about 65%. This compares with Bruce’s overall figure of around 53% for the 8.
(4) You and he agree on 4 of the Top 5 but he includes Zulu at No 2 for critic/audience whereas you ignore that one altogether. His inclusion of it surprised me as Burton just narrates in the movie and I wondered if Bruce was influenced by the fact that like Burton Sir Stanley Baker was Welsh –or, hmm?
(5) Surprised both of you excluded the little British gem Now Barabbas was a Robber aka Now Barabbas which IMDB gives 7.9
4 Throughout the Burton/Taylor years from 1963 – 1972 Liz was always the higher paid in a full-length role but overall Richard generated more personal income as he did almost twice as many movies a Liz in the 63-72 period. Bruce’s stats demonstrate that the adjusted overall gross for Liz’s movies in the period was almost $1.4 billion and Richard’s was nearly $2.2 billion Anyway overall video rating 9/10 – Thanks for good entertainment value.
Bob, thanks for the genereous rating and movie trivia. I didn’t include Zulu of course because Burton only narrated it. Being proudly Welsh the silly twit should have been in the movie, or was he too busy making those godawful Liz Taylor movies?
Now Barabbas is that rare thing, a film only Bob and a small handful of Burton fans have seen. I’ll bet even Burton’s family haven’t seen this one. IMDb lists just 18 votes for Now Barabbas which accounts for the unusually high score 7.9. They were probably patting themselves on the back for having discovered it. Even Bruce refused to include it and he lists walk ons, cameos and narrations. 😉
Burton on Brando (1966) “He is a genuinely good man, I suspect, and he is intelligent. He has depth. It’s no accident that he is such a compelling actor. He puts on acts, of course, and pretends to be vaguer than he is. Very little misses him, as I’ve noticed.”
Burton on Brando (1970) “He really is a smugly pompous little bastard and is cavalier about everybody except Black Panthers and Indians.”
1 Thanks for the new quotes . I read that some time between 1966 and 1970 Burton and Brando were reputed to have had a fist fight aboard a yacht over Liz and if that is true it would explain the change of heart which you record. I am not sure when the interview that I’ve mentioned took place but presumably before any fisticuffs that happened!
2 It all doesn’t seem to have invoked any change of attitude on Liz’s part outwardly at least because in the mid 60s she said that she had admired Mr Mumbles since she was a young girl and when he died Liz went public with glowing praise saying she would forever miss him. She did though generally seem to have a thing for those ‘method’ boys because she was very attached to Clift and is reported to have said that she “loved” Dean.
3 Anyway let’s leave the last word on Burton to Liz “He was among the greatest of actors and it was because other actors were jealous of him that he never got the Oscar.”
Burton on actors (undated) – “Albert Finney is the greatest actor in the world. Then Peter O’Toole. Brando, Olivier and Gielgud belong to another time and place. They’re immortal, but remote from the rest of us. Sean Connery is vastly underrated. I would like to do a play with Michael Caine, whom I respect.”
A shame he never got work to with Connery or Caine (he came close with Zulu). But he did work with Sir Roger on The Wild Geese.
1 One could quibble with the fine tuning of any ranking order but undoubtedly all of those mentioned in your quote from Burton are deservedly in the frame for consideration when selecting the greatest actors.
2 The list of the ones whom Burton chose to mention did in its entirety strike me as odd though but I could not immediately fathom why – and then it struck me. Everybody singled out by the Welsh Richard was a Brit with the exception of Brando. Poor Bruce! – but then again maybe not.
3 Anyway as Dalton said in Roadhouse “Opinions vary.” and Orson Welles seemed to think that the greatest American actor of all time was Joseph Cotton.
NB Sir Sean and Burton were both in The Longest Day but I can’t recall whether they shared any scenes together.
I think it’s safe to say that Brando is the most revered actor among actors, no one else comes close. If you were to take a survey today asking young actors around the world who they idolise, Mr. Mumbles will be at the top of the totem.
Lord Olivier will have his worshippers too, De Niro and Pacino will get votes. hmm I don’t think Cruise, Hanks or Clooney will get a lot of support, I may be wrong. But I am in no doubt Stanley Kowalski rules the roost in filmdom.
Hey Steve….in Burton’s diaries….he did not think so highly of Caine…..but that comment might be before Caine starred switch Taylor in X Y and Zee.
🙂
Hey Bob and Steve…..thanks for all the conversations on Burton, Brando and the rest of the actors you mentioned…..it is interesting and informative.
Without Burton’s outstanding narration…..Zulu might not have been as successful. I figured if Spencer Tracy gets credit for How The West Was Won…..then Burton should get credit for Zulu.
Just superb!!!
I saw him playing at the Old VIC – London. He was great.
Hey Olinda….that sounds like a great memory to have….many people thought Burton and Olivier were the best stage actors ever!
Thank you Olinda….your kind words are greatly appreciated.
Thank to you it is so caring of you, a big hug.
Hey olinda cismeiro…..thank you.
my favorite actor and man
Hope you liked our Burton page…lots of hard to find information in the page.