If you take a walk down Penhydd Street in Pontrhydyfen you probably won't notice anything out of the ordinary. With its traditional terraced houses hugged by lush green hills, it's exactly what you'd expect of a small mining village in the Afan Valley.
But one home on the street has a very extraordinary history as somewhere frequented by Hollywood royalty. It is the home of 73-year-old actress Sian Owen - the niece of legendary Welsh actor Richard Burton.
The Hollywood hellraiser was famous for his colourful private life and his mastery of acting before he died in 1984 at the age of just 58. Although his screen roles and marriages to Elizabeth Taylor made him one of the biggest stars in Tinseltown, to Sian he always was - and still is - just her "Uncle Rich".
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Throughout his life, Sian said her uncle kept close ties with his family and regularly visited her family home with each of his wives. Even when he moved to Switzerland in 1957, she said he still made the journey home to Pontrhydyfen once a year.
Sian said: "Whenever he came home, he always came to this house. When he went to Hollywood and first had fame, he bought all his family a choice of whatever house they wanted. They all decided on a house but my mother decided to stay in this one - I was furious with her at the time because I wanted to live in a posh house. She was the only one who still lived in Pontrhydyfen."
Sian said growing up Richard viewed her mother, Hilda, more as a mother than a sister. Richard was just two years old when his mother Edith died. He was the 12th-born sibling out of 13 and Hilda helped bring her younger siblings up. Sian said: "My mother had to come out of school aged 13 in order to look after the family. she was a bit more like a mam to him. She was the matriarch of the family at the age of 13." Sian said it meant the family stayed incredibly close no matter how famous her Uncle Rich got.
Sian said although her uncle's fame gained momentum early on in his life - through his roles in theatre and radio productions - it didn't quite sink in for her until she met Elizabeth Taylor for the first time at the age of 13. Sian, who played Agnes Spotelli on Welsh language soap opera Pobl y Cwm, said: "He was just Uncle Rich to me and I didn't think anything of it. It all started to make sense to me when I met Elizabeth Taylor. I always wanted to be an actress from day one and I used to get Film Annuals every Christmas and would see Elizabeth Taylor dressed up to the nines dripping in diamonds - then Uncle Rich got with her.
"One day I had been a naughty girl at school playing truant and my mother couldn't cope with me. Uncle Rich told her to send me up to London so he could have a chat with me. My punishment was going up to London to stay at the Dorchester with Uncle Rich and Elizabeth."
Sian said when she arrived at the hotel her uncle was off filming Becket alongside Peter O'Toole, leaving Elizabeth Taylor to greet her. She said: "I arrived at the hotel and met Elizabeth Taylor - who I imagined was about seven foot tall and dripping in diamonds - she came out to meet me with no makeup on, her hair long and beautiful and she was tiny. She was only around five foot one and so petite. Meeting her for the first time was just amazing."
From that point onwards, Sian said she and the family grew close with Elizabeth Taylor - who she said was the only of Richard's four wives who wanted to stay overnight at the family home.
"Out of all the wives she was the only one who wanted to stay at the terrace house," Sian said. "All the others would stay at five-star hotels. It's a three-bedroom house so my mum and dad had one room, my sister and I had another and then my brothers shared the third before they left home. When Elizabeth visited she would sleep in that spare room. They would come for a few days at a time usually once a year."
Sian said Elizabeth loved visiting Wales and was keen to learn the language, which the family always spoke together. According to Sian, Elizabeth was particularly interested in learning the words of Richard's favourite song, Ar Lan Y Mor, so Sian started to teach her the basics.
She said: "When she came to the house, the first thing she said was: 'Ble mae'r tŷ bach?', which means 'where is the toilet?'. She wanted to learn the words of Ar Lan Y Mor because it was one of Uncle Rich's favourite songs so I started to teach her all the basics such as 'nos da' and 'bore da'.
"The first Welsh lesson happened when I was in the Dorchester one night and Uncle Rich said Elizabeth had to go to Paris the next day. I went on the private plane with her the next day along with my sister and a friend of mine and we did a Welsh lesson on the way there. She picked it up well as an actress, she could say 'Llanelli' with no trouble at all."
Even after Richard and Elizabeth divorced for the second and final time in 1976, Sian said Elizabeth kept in touch with the family right up until her death in 2011.
"Every Christmas I would get a beautiful hamper from Fortnum and Mason from her and we would keep in touch to see how she was because she wasn't well in her later years," Sian said. "We weren't that close, but she kept in touch with the family and made sure we were all alright."
Although most of her favourite memories happened during Richard and Elizabeth's marriage, Sian said one situation that still makes her laugh even to this day happened when Richard visited Wales with his third wife Suzy Miller. Sian said: "He and Suzy stayed at the Coed-y-Mwstwr hotel in Bridgend and had the whole family there to eat. I was working on Pobol y Cwm at the time and I was going out with [a cast member] who came along.
"We stayed at [actor] Huw Ceredig's house that night who lived just down the road from the hotel. We all had work the next day so Uncle Rich said he'd get us his car to drive us to work at the old BBC building in Llandaff. The car came out to Coed-y-Mwstwr and picked us up and we had all the press of the world following the car.
"When we got to the BBC we got out of the car and there were cameras absolutely everywhere, I have never seen so many film cameras and photographers. It was absolutely hilarious because they thought Uncle Rich was about to get out of the car at BBC - and there we were, all the actors of Pobl Y Cwm."
Although Richard's health had long been affected by alcoholism, he died suddenly of an intracerebral haemorrhage in 1984 at his home in Céligny, Switzerland, where he was later buried. Shortly before, Sian said he phoned her mother to say he was homesick. Sian said: "Before he died, he phoned my mother and said he had 'terrible hiraeth'.
"So, he flew my mother and a couple of my uncles and aunts out to Switzerland - that was the Easter before he died (in August)." Sian said it was an "absolutely tragic time" for the family. Not only was he just 58-years-old, he remained a huge part of their lives.
In summer 2022 a Welsh family living in the area came across his grave, which had fallen into a state of disrepair. Saddened by its condition, Philip Jennings from Cardiff, along with his wife Birgit and mother Maureen, transformed it into a resting place once again fit for a Hollywood star. Speaking to WalesOnline in July, Philip made an appeal to track down Richard's remaining family members to reassure them that he would maintain the grave.
Sian has since been in touch with Philip and said: "I'm gutted it was such a state. I thanked him on behalf of the whole family and we are very grateful to him."
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