The dark haired 19-year-old has a year left of his drama studies at America s Ivy League Brown University. But while Ritchie continues with his studies, the mother and son, carrying on the acting dynasty together, have been appearing in The Corn is Green at the prestigious Williamstown Drama Festival in Massachusetts. The play about an educated British matron setting up a school to teach the children of Welsh coal miners was written by Emlyn Williams, who coincidentally was one of the late Richard Burton s closest friends.
The young Ritchie whose father Michael has been directing the Williamstown Festival now plans a film career as soon as he leaves university. Also in the audience at the festival was another member of the acting family, Richard Burton s grand-daughter Charlotte Ritchie, 10, who has already expressed an interested in life as an actress. Ritchie said he made a conscious choice in his mid-teens to go into the family business.
And he told a magazine he planned to follow in his grandfather s footsteps by treating film acting professionally but not getting too attached to it. Speaking about her family s history, Kate Burton told a US stage magazine about her son Morgan s first encounter with his grandfather s work. Having brought him with her to a film shoot in North Wales 13 years ago she introduced him to some of his films.
She said, We went to the local video store and got a few tapes. Morgan and I watched three of my dad s movies Anne of a Thousand Days, Becket, and The Taming of the Shrew. The then six-year-old Morgan finally turned to her and said, Grandad sure did a lot of castle-ish movies, Mom!
Richard Burton, born Richard Walter Jenkins on November 10, 1925, was credited with numerous brilliant stage performances in Shakespeare seasons at the Old Vic in London. He also triumphed as King Arthur in Camelot on Broadway and became the highest paid male actor in the 1960s and was nominated for an Oscar seven times, but never won. He died in 1984 from a brain haemorrhage shortly before filming the mercenary epic Wild Geese II, having gained a reputation for doing as many films as possible to bolster his finances.
But he once said, I came from a mining background and having money in your pocket was important. His daughter said she had and her son had learned the lesson. Observing that her father s work ethic was that of a true professional she said, He didn t obsess about his work.
Morgan and I have followed that. We do our work, we leave the room, and we leave the work in the room. Kate Burton has had a number of film roles (including one in the Anne of a Thousand Days) and parts in TV series like Spenser for Hire and Judging Amy, but is best known now for the ABC series Grey s Anatomy.
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