With just 4 films in his resume so far, 29-year-old Brit actor HARRY LAWTEY’s career date has been based in roles on television,  the highlight of which is his 4 years starring in the drama ‘Industry.’  That is all about to change this year as he has just wrapped two movies, with another 3 in various stages of production.  It’s his performance in the first of them, ‘Mr BURTON‘, that is destined to make him an enormous star that the world is going to love. British audiences have seen it already ….in fact it was nominated for a BAFTA for Outstanding British Film of the Year but now it is time for the rest of the world to see it.

The Mr. Burton referred to in the title is a Welsh schoolmaster (played by the superb Toby Jones)  who poured his own frustrated dreams of the theatre into the bright young miner’s son Richard Jenkins, coaching him in acting and even making him his legal ward and getting him to change his surname to Burton to facilitate the teacher’s sponsorship of his Oxford scholarship.

When he does well in Mr Burton’s English class and at his drama club, he moves into Mr Burton’s house, where the film imagines a landlady called Ma Smith (Academy Award nominee Lesley Manville).  The drama here is absolutely clear that there was nothing predatory in the older man’s intentions, but certainly Richard himself is resentful and confused and there is an excruciatingly embarrassing encounter between the two in Mr Burton’s bedroom with both in their pyjamas.

Period dramas such as this are what the Brits excel at, and we are used to allowing some licence when the truth gets a little stretched, dealing with history’s more colourful characters, and there were none more so than Richard Burton….and his future wife, the Queen of Hollywood 

PS Next up will be Sam Mendes’ series of 4 movies on THE BEATLES.  Lawty is paying Stu Sutcliffe known as The Fifth Beatle