Levardis Robert Martyn Burton Jr. (born February 16, 1957) is an American actor, presenter, director, and author. His first major part was the role of a young Kunta Kinte in the 1977 ABC television miniseries Roots, a role he reprised in the 1988 television film Roots: The Gift. In 1983 he became the host of the long-running PBS children's series Reading Rainbow, and again performed a lead role as Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He has also directed a number of television episodes for various iterations of Star Trek, among other programs.
Levardis Robert Martyn Burton Jr. 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 and namesake, Levardis Robert Martyn Burton Sr., 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.