An Intellectual Ashamed of His Craft
To the world, he was a natural successor to Laurence Olivier, a Shakespearean heavyweight who conquered Hollywood. In his private diaries, however, a different man emerged—one who often found acting to be a hollow pursuit. “All my life I think I have
been secretly ashamed of being an actor and the older I get the more ashamed I get,” he wrote. This wasn't false modesty. Burton was a voracious reader and a gifted writer who once dreamed of a life as a scholar or author. He saw acting as a frivolous way for a grown man to make a living, often expressing his contempt for the work. His diaries are filled with entries of profound boredom and frustration with his career. “I loathe, loathe, loathe acting,” he confessed in one particularly candid entry from 1969.
The First Love He Left Behind
Part of Burton's disillusionment stemmed from his belief that Hollywood could never offer him roles with the substance of the stage. Hailed for his powerhouse performances in plays like "Hamlet," he felt that film was a lesser medium. Critics and peers often viewed his move to Hollywood as a betrayal of his immense talent, a sentiment that clearly affected him. He was famously quoted as saying he'd rather have played rugby for Wales than Hamlet at The Old Vic. This conflict between artistic integrity and commercial success became a central struggle of his life. He would frequently take lucrative but artistically empty film roles to fund his and Elizabeth Taylor's lavish lifestyle, all while longing for the intellectual rigor of classic theater or literature.
The Gilded Cage of Fame
While he admitted to enjoying the perks of being rich and famous, Burton chafed under the relentless scrutiny that came with being one half of the world's most famous couple. He once remarked that he didn't truly understand fame until he walked down the street with Elizabeth Taylor for the first time. The constant swirl of paparazzi, scandals, and public expectation created a pressure cooker environment. His diaries reveal a man who often wished to simply be left alone, to spend his days reading and writing. He and Taylor often dreamed of a quiet life, an “eternal Sunday” where they would never have to work again. The enormous celebrity he achieved, largely through his relationship with Taylor, often overshadowed the work he was so conflicted about in the first place.
A Battle with the Bottle and Himself
It's impossible to separate Burton's career frustrations from his lifelong battle with alcoholism. His drinking was legendary, a habit he picked up as a teenager in Wales. While he was a functional alcoholic for many years, the addiction ultimately took a severe toll on his health and his work, fueling his self-doubt and depression. He sometimes drank multiple bottles of spirits a day, and by the 1970s, it began to seriously impact his performances. During the filming of one movie, he was reportedly so inebriated he had to deliver his lines sitting or lying down. The drink was both an escape from the pressures he felt and a source of deeper self-loathing, a vicious cycle that characterized much of his later life.
