EXCLUSIVE: Was Richard Burton Abused by His Stepdad? 'Brutal Truth' Behind Actor's Relationship With 'Creepy' Surrogate Father Revealed

A new film dramatizes the life of hard-drinking, bed-hopping Hollywood Lothario Richard Burton – and how a lonely homosexual schoolmaster mentored him.

But the flick Mr Burton glosses over the predatory nature of Welsh teacher Philip Burton, played by Toby Jones, and RadarOnline.com can reveal the creepy tutor’s true intentions for taking the young then-Richard Jenkins under his wing.

He even paid his father, dubbed Daddy Ni who regularly sank 12 pints of beer a day – the equivalent of $4,000 in today’s money to become his legal guardian and the 17-year-old moved in with Burton, 20 years his senior, in 1943.

The aspiring actor took the man’s surname as he was transformed from a coal miner’s son to one of the greatest actors of his generation, but friends and former lovers point to a darker side of the seemingly mild-mannered teacher.

Burton, who died aged 58 in 1984, never publicly speculated about Philip Burton’s sexuality.

But Roger Lewis, whose recent biography of both Burton and ex-wife Elizabeth Taylor, Erotic Vagrancy, makes a fair claim to being the most authoritative account of their chaotic, glamorous lives, suggests explicitly Philip was not only gay but a pedophile – describing him as "drab and creepy, a snail or whelk curled inside its shell."

Writer Rosemary Kingsland – who wrote a memoir about her love affair with Burton – more bluntly added Philip was "a bloody a***-bandit."

Kingsland said Burton felt unhappy about his involvement with Philip, revealing: "I absolutely think Richard had a sexual relationship with Philip Burton, because of what he said to me, and how he said it.

"If he’d just been p***k-teasing him, he might have felt a bit embarrassed or guilty about it. But when he’d had a lot to drink, he was very, very black and angry about Philip. He kept saying that he’d led Philip along and teased him.

"But he also said, 'Why would anyone take you into their house unless they wanted your a***?'"

When interviewed in 2003, 13 years after Philip’s death in 1990, Kingsland was also the first person to say publicly that he was less than saintly.

She added: "I just got the impression he felt things hadn’t been quite right, or normal. Richard had built up a deep anger within himself and much of it was directed at Philip Burton. He never mentioned him with affection. There was always a feeling of angst or regret."

Throughout his life, Burton was tormented by fear of repressed homosexuality.

Despite being married five times in the 58 years he lived – twice to Taylor – he once suggested "many actors are gay, and we just cover it up with drink," and said that "I drank because I was afraid of being a homosexual... I was a homosexual once but not for long."

He played several overtly gay roles – including a gangster in the 1971 British crime thriller Villain and a hairdresser in the 1969 comedy-drama Staircase – but did so with sufficient detachment to make it quite clear to his audience that he, the legendary Lothario, was very different to these characters.

In his diaries, he was scathing about many of the gay people he worked with throughout his career.

He wrote of one friend, Raymond Pike, that he was "camping around with every conceivable signal of blatant homosexuality” and sighed: "Any minute or dark day now he is going to look his age. Terrible to be a middle-aged poof."

Still, not everyone was taken in. Burton’s friend and co-star Peter O’Toole remarked, with a lack of political correctness: "It looks as though you cornered the limp wrist market, duckie."