Levardis Robert Martyn Burton Jr. (born February 16, 1957) is an American actor, presenter, director and author. He is best known for his role as Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation, being the host of the long-running PBS children\'s series Reading Rainbow and the young Kunta Kinte in the 1977 award-winning ABC television miniseries Roots. He has also directed a number of television episodes for various iterations of Star Trek, among other programs.\n', '

Burton was born at the U.S. Army Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in West Germany. His mother, Erma Gene (née Christian), was a social worker, administrator, and educator. His father, Levardis Robert Martyn Burton, was a photographer for the U.S. Army Signal Corps at the time he was stationed at Landstuhl. Burton and his two sisters were raised by his mother in Sacramento, California.\n', '

Burton was raised Roman Catholic and, at the age of thirteen, entered St. Pius X Minor Seminary in Galt, California, to become a priest. While in seminary, he read works by the philosophers Laozi, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Søren Kierkegaard, which caused him to question the Catholic dogma that Catholicism is the only true religion. At seventeen, Burton graduated with the class of 1974 and enrolled at the University of Southern California with a drama scholarship. While at the University of Southern California, Burton was a member of the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California\'s School of Theatre.\n', '

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