Iris Miller

IRIS BURTON, HOLLYWOOD AGENT 4-9-1930 — 5-3-2008

IRIS Burton, a dancer turned Hollywood agent who helped launch the careers of many young talents, including River Phoenix and Henry Thomas, has died of pneumonia in Los Angeles.

Burton, who was 77, specialised in child actors from the time she opened her agency in the mid-1970s, and won major roles on television and film for her young clients. They included Adam Rich (Eight is Enough), Kirk Cameron (Growing Pains) and Candace Cameron (Full House).

She found the brothers River and Joaquin Phoenix and their sisters Summer and Rain singing for spare change in Westwood, Los Angeles. She soon represented all four. River Phoenix died in 1993, at age 23.

She also discovered Henry Thomas during an open audition in San Antonio, and he was cast as Elliott, a leading role in the 1982 movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

Born Iris Burstein in New York, she began her career as a child dancer and went on to perform in Broadway shows using the name Iris Burton. She moved to Hollywood in the early 1950s and was cast in a number of movies, among them Top Banana (1954), a showbiz comedy starring Phil Silvers. She also danced in The Ten Commandments (1956), starring Charlton Heston.

She was very protective of her young clients, overseeing everything from their hair and fingernails to weight.

Burton was divorced from the actor and director Sidney Miller. She is survived by their son, Barry, who was in such films as Saturday Night Fever and Fame, and in 1985 won a Tony in the Neil Simon hit Broadway comedy Biloxi Blues.

LOS ANGELES TIMES