[2] Resettling in the new cultural environment of San Antonio, young Robert took immediate notice of the style of speaking in the city, and he soon became interested in the variety of dialects spoken elsewhere in Texas and in the surrounding region.

"[3] All of those early experiences of coping with his speech disorder and fine-tuning his ear to the peculiarities of regional accents and the subtleties of voice patterns proved to be, career-wise, great advantages for Robert.

[4] He also performed on Fibber McGee and Molly, The Fred Allen Show, The Halls of Ivy, Our Miss Brooks, Suspense, William Shakespeare—A Portrait in Sound, The Zero Hour, and on an array of other radio programs.

His first onscreen credit—still presented as Robert Easton Burke—was for his role as a soldier in the 1951 MGM production of the Civil War classic The Red Badge of Courage, directed by John Huston and starring Audie Murphy.

He also appeared on several episodes of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show on CBS in 1957-1958, playing Brian McAfee, a dimwitted student at the University of Southern California.

In 1962 he was cast in the second episode of The Saint, "The Latin Touch", with Roger Moore; and he also provided the voices of "X-2-Zero" and "Phones" in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Supermarionation series Stingray.

[2] After marrying June Bettine Grimstead in March 1961, Easton moved with his wife to her native England, where, for several years, in addition to performing on British radio and television programs, he began to intensify and systematically organize his study of accents and speech patterns.

He traveled about the country recording the voices of farmers, cabdrivers, shopkeepers, and hotel guests in order to compare and analyze varying modes of English pronunciation, as well as the unique sounds and structures of other European languages and dialects he encountered.

[2] In 1964, after he and his wife returned to the United States, he resumed his acting career in Hollywood, and he also began to assist his fellow actors with modifying their manner of speaking to improve their chances of landing roles in auditions, and to enhance the quality of their performances in films and in television productions.

[3] By the late 1970s, his work as an instructor eclipsed acting as his principal vocation as increasing numbers of actors, screenwriters, directors, and studio executives were recognizing him as the entertainment industry's "dean of dialects" and the "Henry Higgins of Hollywood".

A few of the actors he tutored in speech included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gregory Peck, who required an accurate German accent for his dialogue in the 1978 film The Boys from Brazil; the English actor Laurence Olivier, whom he helped to speak in the style of a native resident of Michigan for The Betsy (1978); Ben Kingsley, another Englishman, whom he assisted with his Indian accent for Gandhi (1982) and his dialogue as a New Yorker in Bugsy (1991); Al Pacino with his Cuban dialect in Scarface (1983); Arnold Schwarzenegger, in adapting his Austrian accent to Russian for Red Heat (1988); Irish actor Liam Neeson for his role as a Kentuckian in Next of Kin (1989); Robert Duvall in his portrayal of Virginia native and Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Gods and Generals (2003); and Forest Whitaker, whom he coached to speak with specific regional African intonations and inflections for Whitaker's Oscar-winning performance as Ugandan political leader Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland (2006).

Over the years, he was also hired by business executives, trial lawyers, religious leaders, university professors, and by others who sought to soften their accents or alter their speech in other ways to improve their communication skills or to increase their self-confidence when making public presentations.

He provided the voice, for example, for the audio-animatronic figure of Thomas Jefferson in The American Adventure pavilion, which opened in 1982 at Disney's Epcot theme park in Florida.

[21] Four years after Easton's death, his substantial personal library was sold in two installments – in the summer and fall of 2015 – by Addison & Sarova Auctioneers of Macon, Georgia.