He wouldn't teach English, Toby Jones says. But drama? "Maybe," he pauses, "drama in the widest possible sense of the word, because it is an ever-expanding field, I suppose."
It's certainly an exciting playground for the Hammersmith-born character actor, who since the early '90s has elevated dozens of movies and TV films and series. In 2023, Jones became a national treasure starring in Mr Bates vs the Post Office, the ITV drama about former subpostmaster Alan Bates's relentless campaign for justice in the notorious class-action suit.
In Mr. Burton, set in Port Talbot in 1942, Jones plays Philip Burton (1904–95), the schoolmaster who, in his English class, spotted Richard Jenkins's raw potential as an actor and subsequently took him under his wing and mentored him. Himself an actor and BBC radio scriptwriter, Philip even became Richard's legal ward, hence the latter's change of name from Jenkins to Burton. The future star had been born into a poor mining family in South Wales in 1925.
Jones, who invariably gives ordinary characters an extraordinary voice and presence, gives a seemingly effortlessly performance as the gentlemanly Philip as he and Richard negotiate class prejudice and other problems in wartime Wales. One of them is the homophobia aroused by unfounded suspicions that Philip and Richard were lovers.
Jones previously confronted homophobia when playing Truman Capote in the biopic Infamous (2007), in which he gave one of his finest performances in a rare leading movie role. He gave another as the introverted English sound engineer who's out of his depth working on an Italian horror film in Berberian Sound Studio (2012). As an actor he is invariably exciting to watch, whether playing one half of the Detectorists (2014-22) or showing up in the Harry Potter, Captain America, Hunger Games, Indiana Jones, and Jurassic World blockbuster franchises.
PAMELA JAHN: What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Richard Burton?
TOBY JONES: Richard Burton, in my childhood, was the stuff of paparazzi. His theatrical heyday had gone, and he was really in the gossip columns as much as he was in movies, the occasional good movie. I remember seeing him in 1984, and I saw Wild Geese as a child. As for many, the most legendary recording that one has of him is Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, which my father played to me. Just by dint of his unique voice, he was a feature of my imagination. I wasn't aware of his theatrical magic. That was before my time. And, certainly, I knew nothing about Philip Burton.
How did you become involved in the film?
The script was sent to me quite a long time ago. I met with the director, Mark Evans, because I was intrigued by the story. With most independent films, when they're trying to seduce you into doing it, or they're very kindly inviting you to take part, you're aware that these things may come and go. So, you engage, but you don't fully invest in them emotionally right from the start, because projects like this are so hard to fund now.
Has your perception of Richard Burton changed since you made the film?
It has. This story, which is a twentieth century story, really, is one of social mobility. One hears of it less and less in our industry, this idea of climbing a ladder of education and professional renown, the meritocratic element of it. Today there is enough work for everyone for the good to rise, no matter what class you're from. Mr Burton feels like a period piece in this century, I'm afraid to say.
It's also a hidden romantic story...
A very strange one, indeed. And I guess what makes this interesting to our modern eye, is looking at this somewhat inappropriate relationship where a teacher perhaps overinvests in a pupil in a way that now might be considered sinister but, back then, was considered deluxe service – where the teacher is invited, effectively, to adopt the child as their own. Nowadays, I suspect that would be at least frowned upon and possibly prosecuted in its worst manifestation.
You portray Philip Burton as a gently charismatic figure – a teacher who makes the classroom his own stage, somewhat like Robin Williams's character in Dead Poets Society. Was that performance a reference point for you?
Only in so far as that's in my head somewhere. I certainly didn't consciously think of him. I'm lucky – I've had teachers at different stages in my life who have completely fired my imagination, and they were more direct references. In a way, what makes Philip Burton unique is the postwar setting. He's a professional and very ambitious radio playwright. But suddenly he finds himself in a school teaching English, and at that time, one didn't have teachers like that...teachers who'd provoke, disorientate, and inconvenience you in some way, and who would be both entertaining and educational.
The young Richard Jenkins is inspired by Shakespeare's plays to join Burton's drama club. What made you want to become an actor?
As much as reading Shakespeare and being properly taught at 14 or 15, I think it's much more to do with the validation that I received as a child from adults when I could please them in some way around a table by telling a story. That was a profound influence. But then also, latterly, a sense of a need for romance, for adventure, for the unpredictable in my life, as much as a desire to live around texts and words, group creation and collaboration. I think about it a lot even now. Why do I still want to work as an actor? That's what self-employment does. It's constantly making you reassess your relationship with what you do.
Richard Burton's greatest quality was his voice. What was the key for you in creating the character of Philip Burton?
I was very nervous about playing someone who had an Anglo-Welsh accent because that's neither one thing nor another. You slightly panic that people are going to say, "Oh, well, he hasn't done his work on that." So that was a technical distraction. But then there's Philip's dignity, a certain nobility he had, the fact that he has a status that I don't think teachers have any longer in that community. The social hierarchy back then was still very much intact, and when the film gets into areas of sexuality, there is that shock for Burton about the impropriety that is being implied.
The film also touches on Richard Burton's struggle with his masculinity in the process of becoming an actor. Was that ever a question for you?
I'm not sure I've ever closely scrutinised my masculinity, not consciously at least. But that's probably changed over time. When one is adolescent, there is a difference in how one presents oneself as opposed to how one might feel, one's sensitivities. I remember when I had children, it felt like a box was opening and a whole load of emotions that I seemed to have stowed somewhere as a teenage boy behind irony and other means of self-protection were suddenly available to me. And not only that, but they became also of huge use to me in my work.
You mentioned Philip's accent. Do you feel that the film and TV industry and audiences judge actors' ability to master accents more important than other skills these days?
That's a curious phenomenon, isn't it, now? So many scripts you see are based on true stories, and at the end of the credits, you see pictures of the actors twined with photos of the real people. So you're invited in a way to applaud the simulation. To me, it seems utterly ridiculous, because the point of making something is that you deliver some new information that is both archetypal and specific.
It must be annoying for you as an actor that people sometimes judge a performance based on how good you are in sounding like an American or Welsh person?
What's interesting about the accent is: In America, no one ever mentions it. I played Americans many times. And each time I'm paranoid, but no one cares. Whereas over here there is almost a theatrical tradition of addressing the voice in its quality, but also in its dialect and accent. Despite that, it might be that modern life requires certain metrics with which to measure art. However, if anyone is bothered about that, then the film in question is clearly not working anyway, because it's really about empathy and engagement on an emotional level.
You went to acting school in Paris. What did you learn from the French that the English couldn't teach you?
It was one teacher in particular, Jacques Lecoq, who happened to be French. He opened an international theatre school based on the tradition of the masque and commedia dell'arte and various genres. Choosing this training was the best decision I ever made about anything in my career. What I learned was a very physical approach to acting. By physical, I mean not just waggling my arms around or running fast, but how to use breath to organise the body, how to work in counterpoint, how to consider things like neutrality that sound incredibly theatrical but have proved invaluable in the work I've done in front of the camera, especially in terms of the value of stillness and different spectra of movement.
How do you approach a character like Philip Burton compared to someone like subpostmaster Alan Bates?
You're trying to find everything about the character that you detect is different from yourself. This is a very shorthand way of putting it, but you're looking for restrictions, like in any art form. You're looking for ways to stop them being you and then fire your own sensibility through those curbs in a way. You might use a different voice or move at a different pace, or you might be less emotionally expressive. But then acting on one level is also persuading yourself that you are the person other people think you can be. Someone will pay you money to be Alan Bates, and I spend quite a lot of time persuading myself that that's possible.
Was Bates one of the most difficult nuts to crack for you as an actor?
When playing these characters, you're only playing the parts of them that the screenwriter chooses to reveal. But I also met Alan a couple of times, and he's tricky because I wanted to represent some of his dignity, something of his self-possession, something of his emotional containment. And all of that is about not doing, not acting it out. At the same time, as an actor, you can sometimes get a bit panicky if you're not performing as such.
The story of Philip Burton doesn't end where the film ends. Could there be a sequel to it? somewhere?
His life subsequent to the events in the film is remarkable. You suspect that the person in the film with his rejected radio scripts will be forgotten and that, as an older man, he settles for regret and disappointment. But the exact opposite is the case. He goes to America, sets up a drama school in New York. He stays friends with Richard Burton, even outlives him. This man has a huge second and third act that's certainly worth telling. That's way more than one film, our film, could achieve.
Mr Burton is available on BBC iPlayer. The film has been financed by BBC Wales and Ffilm Cymru Wales, in partnership with the Welsh government agency Creative Wales.
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