Richard Burton

He began life as Richard Walter Jenkins in Pontrhydyfen, a mining town in South Wales, on Nov. 10, 1925, the twelfth of 13 children born to Richard "Dic" Jenkins and his wife Edith, who died at the age of 44 while giving birth to the thirteenth child. Because his father was a heavy drinker and gambler whose lively personality hid a streak of violence, at age two, Burton was adopted, more or less, by his sister Cecilia and her husband, Elfed, and raised in Port Talbot. Another sibling, Ifor, who was 19 years older than Burton, became his de facto father figure, and in later years, his assistant and boon companion. Though he excelled at school, especially in English and Welsh literature, his interests were geared more toward rugby and cricket. At 15, he abandoned school to work as a haberdasher's assistant, but despised the menial work.