Kathy Burke

Everything you could reasonably want to know about the actress and director

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What’s this site about?

Everything you could reasonably want to know about the actor and director Kathy Burke.

And why does it exist?

Because Kathy Burke is the best British character actress of her generation, a comic marvel, and a down-to-earth hero to millions.

She has won worldwide acclaim in both comedy and serious drama roles. She has range – in both life and work.

As an actress, she stunned as a battered wife in Nil by Mouth, appalled as a crass tart in her own sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme, and amazed as a horny (male) teenager in Harry Enfield’s comedy show. Her cameos often steal the show.

As a director, Kathy has produced numerous plays to critical acclaim. And as a human being she has inspired, encouraged and cheered millions of ordinary citizens. Who else would Stephen Fry put in “Room Lovely” where everything about the world is good and life-enhancing?

See more on her, from recent news to a rundown of her career in films, television and theatre to date, interviews and articles about her and a small piece about Kathy and this website.

  • Articles,  Media

    My acting days are over

    October 19, 2004 /

    Kathy Burke had it all as an actress – critical acclaim, a top award at Cannes, and a place in the nation’s heart as Waynetta Slob. But now she has found a new passion, she tells Jasper Rees The Daily Telegraph Kathy Burke was, for a period in the 1990s, a sort of cockney working-class Judi Dench. Straddling the broad comedy of the television sketch show Harry Enfield and Chums and the unflinching realism of Gary Oldman’s movie Nil By Mouth, for which she won a best actress award at Cannes in 1997, she was one of those much loved performers everyone got used to always being around. When an…

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    Carlton preview of Kevin & Perry Go Large

    April 1, 2000

    Kathy Burke in Walking and Talking on Sky Atlantic

    June 23, 2012

    Patron saint of underdogs

    March 13, 2001
  • Articles,  Media,  The Quare Fellow

    Kathy comes home

    February 1, 2004 /

    The Observer When I first decided to take off the tap shoes and concentrate on theatre directing, Dominic Dromgoole got in touch to ask if I’d like to do something with Oxford Stage Company. My reaction was negative. What I enjoy most about directing is the chance of working things out with the writer, plus I need their approval and I like the chat. I didn’t want to work on dry, old plays written by the dry, old dead. Luckily for me, he ignored my ignorance, phoned back a year later and said: ‘What about The Quare Fellow by Brendan Behan? It’s not been done for 20 years, bit neglected.…

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    My acting days are over

    October 19, 2004

    60-second interview: Kathy Burke

    July 9, 2002

    Meet the romantic lead in the new Merchant-Ivory film. (Just kidding)

    January 5, 1997
  • Articles,  Media

    60-second interview: Kathy Burke

    July 9, 2002 /

    The Metro Kathy Burke is probably the UK’s most versatile actress; whether playing Linda in Gimme Gimme Gimme or portraying a victim of domestic violence in Nil By Mouth, the plaudits are all hers. Yet now she’s turned to her other love, and has her West End directorial debut with Betty, starring Geraldine McNulty at the Vaudeville Theatre. How crazy is it seeing yourself on screen?It’s horrible. People started to get really body-conscious when camcorders came along. They suddenly saw what they really looked like. You look in the mirror and see what you want to see but when you find out how other people see you, it’s a bit of a shock. Is…

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    With most television stars, their small-screen personas are larger than life. With Kathy Burke, it’s the other way round

    August 13, 1995

    Burke’s peerage

    July 13, 1999

    Meet the romantic lead in the new Merchant-Ivory film. (Just kidding)

    January 5, 1997
  • Articles,  Media

    Beautiful things: Kathy Burke and Jonathan Harvey

    March 18, 2001 /

    The Independent It’s official. Kathy Burke is a national treasure. Stephen Fry confirmed as much in his appearance last week on BBC2’s Room 101. Wishing to condemn Room 101 to Room 101, he proposed an alternative repository for everything fluffy in life: Room Lovely. The very first thing he suggested placing in Room Lovely was Kathy Burke. “She’s just great,” Fry rhapsodised. “She’s got everything that’s great about being great. She’s incredibly clever and charming – she writes brilliant plays as well as being a wonderful actress and extremely amusing. If she appears on television or in a film, we immediately think ‘oh great’. And she’s gutsy. If I was a woman, she’d be…

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    60-second interview: Kathy Burke

    June 2, 2005

    ‘I’m a person who walks on eggshells’

    October 23, 2005
    Kathy Burke. Pic by Clara Molden

    Kathy Burke: ‘A national treasure? I’m the opposite!’

    April 6, 2011
  • Articles,  Media

    Patron saint of underdogs

    March 13, 2001 /

    The Telegraph Kathy Burke is on her way to becoming an institution. As she puts it: “I’ve got one of those ‘national treasure’ labels.” The 36-year-old actress is often met with smiles from passers-by and a cheery “All right, Kaff?”. Burke has been cherished for some time. Appearing on TV with Harry Enfield throughout the 1990s made her a household name, her gallery of unlovelies inspiring widespread feelings of revulsion and adulation. Most memorably, she gave us Waynetta Slob, fag-in-mouth wife of Enfield’s foul, beer-bellied Wayne; Perry, mumbling sidekick to the acned adolescent monster Kevin; and Lulu, the dribbling baby sister of Enfield’s vindictive toddler Harry. It wasn’t until 1997,…

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    Q&A: Kathy Burke

    April 15, 2012

    60-second interview: Kathy Burke

    June 2, 2005

    With most television stars, their small-screen personas are larger than life. With Kathy Burke, it’s the other way round

    August 13, 1995
  • The Martins
    Articles,  Media

    Kathy goes a stage beyond

    March 13, 2001 /

    The Evening Standard If I had been around 100 years ago, I would have been a male impersonator in the music halls, says Kathy Burke. Instead, the 21st century’s answer to Vesta Tilley has strutted her trousered stuff as the smaller, but stroppier, half of that wonderfully dopey duo Kevin and Perry for the delectation of the telly-watching nation. “It’s a great liberation for a woman to play a man’s role: I’ve been asked to play a couple of blokes on telly since Perry, and I was quite flattered, really. I said no because physically it’s quite painful, know what I mean?” she adds, miming an excruciating clamp-down in the…

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    Kathy Burke in Walking and Talking on Sky Atlantic

    June 23, 2012
    Kathy Burke at home. Pic by Teri Pengilley

    From Waynetta to director

    February 27, 2009

    Kathy comes home: A new sitcom paints a happier picture of Kathy Burke’s childhood

    June 21, 2012
  • Articles,  Media

    Kathy comes home

    January 16, 1999 /

    The Irish Post London-Irish actress Kathy Burke has popped up again on our TV screens, this time in the form of an orange-bewigged flatmate nightmare hunting for a man. Joe Crilly reports. Gimme Gimme Gimme is an odd couple scenario scripted by acclaimed playwright Jonathan Harvey. Kathy Burke plays down-at-heel Linda, who is hungry for love and passion. She shares a flat with her gay friend, Tom, played by James Dreyfus, who also hankers after the ideal mate, like the lyrics of the Abba song, ‘Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight’. In last week’s first episode Linda, discovering a strange man in their flat after a night on the town,…

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    ‘I’m a person who walks on eggshells’

    October 23, 2005

    Q&A: Kathy Burke

    April 15, 2012
    Kathy Burke at home. Pic by Teri Pengilley

    From Waynetta to director

    February 27, 2009
  • Articles,  Media

    The gay, the sad and the ugly

    January 4, 1999 /

    Kathy Burke says she knows her place when it comes to casting. And it’s not among the beautiful people. The Independent If you thought that Waynetta was a slob, Linda, the character Kathy Burke plays in a new BBC2 sitcom, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, is even more gross than the shell-suited, chain-smoking wife of Wayne she inhabits for Harry Enfield and Chums. Life for Linda and her gay flatmate Tom (James Dreyfus from The Thin Blue Line) is one long sex, drugs and rock’n’roll perma-bender. Done up in a ginger fright-wig and white-rimmed clown glasses, Linda gets so out of it her only way of knowing whether she ended the blinder…

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    ‘I find brains sexy. What I’d really like is a plumber who can read’

    January 13, 2000

    Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke bring everyone’s favourite angst-ridden teenagers to the big screen

    September 9, 1999

    Kathy comes home

    February 10, 2002
  • Articles,  Media

    Meet the romantic lead in the new Merchant-Ivory film. (Just kidding)

    January 5, 1997 /

    The Observer Common sense and Equity unemployment statistics prove acting is a madly competitive business. Yet the way actors tell it, this same profession breeds nothing but solidarity, tolerance and mutual admiration among its members. Only occasionally does someone break rank. In a letter to the London magazine Time Out last October, replying to comments made in an interview by Helena Bonham Carter, the actress Kathy Burke wrote: ‘As a lifelong member of the non-pretty working classes, I would like to say to Helena Bonham Carter (wholly pledged member of the very pretty upper-middle classes): shut up you stupid c-.’ But The Observer has enough scruples about printing the f-word, let alone the c-word.…

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    The Martins

    Kathy goes a stage beyond

    March 13, 2001

    Kathy comes home: A new sitcom paints a happier picture of Kathy Burke’s childhood

    June 21, 2012

    Kathy stars in a change of role

    February 2, 2005

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