Forty-two years after the death of her father, Richard Burton, Kate Burton is opening up about his battle with alcoholism as well as his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor.
“I grew up alongside two of the most famous human beings on earth,” Kate, 68, told The Times. “There was no precedent for the kind of attention my dad, Richard Burton, and my stepmum, Elizabeth Taylor, received. Dad was an alcoholic, but in my entire 26 years with this man, until he died in 1984, I maybe saw him drunk five times.”
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His romance with La Liz began on the set of Cleopatra in 1962 when he was married to Kate’s mother, Sybil Williams. Taylor was also married, to Eddie Fisher.
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But despite the scandal, Kate says she had a very loving upbringing. “I was parented as much by Elizabeth and my stepdad, the actor and musician Jordan Christopher — who my mum married in 1965 — as my actual parents,” she recalls. “These two vibrant families never spoke or intersected, but in the middle of the all-consuming public interest in us, my step-siblings and I bonded for life because we really got what it was like to be us. We were and still are incredibly close.”
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