Raymond William Stacey Burr (May 21, 1917 - September 12, 1993) was an actor. He was born in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada, and it is not known if he ever took out U.S. citizenship.

Burr became interested in acting after Naval service in World War II (he was wounded at the Battle of Okinawa). Burr broke into films in 1946 and made 90 in the next decade. He co-starred in the classics A Place In The Sun and Rear Window. Burr usually played menacing villians on the screen although in 1956 he played the hero reporter Steve Martin in the Japanese "monster" hit Godzilla.

Burr became a television star in 1957 with the debut of Perry Mason where he played Erle Stanley Gardner's crafty defense attorney who always defended the innocent. The show was very popular and lasted nine years. In 1967, Burr started another long running television series Ironside (known as A Man Called Ironside in the UK) in which he played a wheelchair-bound police detective. This show lasted until 1975. Burr had a couple of other shortlived series but was unable to repeat his earlier hits. He co-starred in such TV films as Love's Savage Fury (1979), Eischied: Only The Pretty Girls Die (1979), Disaster On The Coastliner (1979), The Curse Of King Tut's Tomb (1980), The Night The City Screamed (1980), and Peter And Paul (1981). Burr also had a supporting role in Dennis Hopper's controversial film Out Of The Blue (1980) and spoofed his Perry Mason image in Airplane II: The Sequel (1982). In 1985, Burr made a comeback as Perry Mason and made a series of 26 two-hour movies that were enormous ratings blockbusters.

In contrast to the "bad guys" and hard unbending heroes he often played, Raymond Burr was in real life a generous man who gave enormous sums of money to charity. He once sponsored 20 foster children. He would insist that TV executives and directors treat his co-stars with the same respect shown him.

Burr died on September 12, 1993 in Sonoma, California and was interred in the Fraser Cemetery, New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. After Burr's death, an urban legend began that he was a homosexual. This was not true. Burr had been married as a young man and he and his wife had a child that died at birth. Shortly after, Burr's wife died in the same plane crash that killed the actor Leslie Howard. Their plane was shot down by Nazis who believed Winston Churchill was on board. Burr rarely spoke of this and thus it was assumed he never married.

Raymond Burr has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6656 Hollywood Blvd.

The Raymond Burr Performing Arts Centre (opened in October 2000) not only bears his name but is in the town of his birth (and final resting place), near a city block bearing the family name of Burr. At present a 238-seat intimate theatre, the goal is to become a 650-seat regional performing arts facility.

A few small pieces of trivia: since the theatre began producing plays, it has been the custom always to have a picture of Raymond Burr included somewhere on each set, and the first toast on the opening night of every production is always dedicated to his memory.