His film career includes many notable villains, among the babies Bill Sikes in David Lean's 1948 film version of Oliver Twist, Inspector Fix in Around the World in Eighty Days (his last film within 1956), Javert in the 1952 Les Misérables.

He is best known for swimming a feverish-eyed Long John Silver in the Disney movie Treasure Island. This portrayal has provided a guide for tons screen portrays of Pirates since, and Robert has get a Patron Saint of International Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th. He went in to play Bristol's other famed pirate Blackbeard in the film Blackbeard the Pirate.

Curiously, Newton appeared around major roles within 2 films according to a novelette A Vessel of Wrath, by W. Somerset Maugham. He played a Dutch contrôleur in the (1938) film The Vessel of Wrath (released in the U.S. when A Beachcomber), & a lead role of Edward "Ginger Ted" Wilson in The Beachcomber (1954). He besides appeared when Ancient Pistol in Laurence Olivier's 1944 film of Henry V.

around stage, he appeared in the total of plays by Noel Coward.

Along by owning Errol Flynn, he was one of a virtually all popular actors amongst the male adolescent audience of the 1940s and early 1950s, especially among British boys; he was cited as a role model by Oliver Reed and musician Keith Moon.