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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    Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke

    ‘I’d see her every day of my life if I could’

    April 10, 2002

    Kathy stars in a change of role

    February 2, 2005

    Kathy comes home

    January 16, 1999
  • Articles,  Media

    Burke’s peerage

    July 13, 1999 /

    The Times The perfect connections: Gary Oldman, Harry Enfield, Meryl Streep. The perfect credentials: best actress gong, Time Out award, adoring public. Yet Kathy Burke is a lady unafraid to act unladylike. Two weeks ago, Kathy Burke was shopping in Waitrose on London’s Holloway Road. As she nudged her trolley along the aisles of fresh fruit, pet food and microwave dinners, she was stopped by a series of strangers. Some told the 34-year-old actress how much they laughed at her sex starved, wig-wearing harridan in Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, the sitcom which has just finished its successful run on BBC2; others, including one slightly stiff middle-aged man, congratulated Burke on her recent portrayal of…

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    Q&A: Kathy Burke

    April 15, 2012

    Kathy Burke in Walking and Talking on Sky Atlantic

    June 23, 2012

    60-second interview: Kathy Burke

    June 2, 2005
  • Articles,  Media

    Bold as brass, that’s our Kathy

    December 4, 1998 /

    The Evening Standard ‘I think if I was a bloke I’d be quite f***ed up because I’ve got a lot of male in me. It’s because I’m a bird that I’m not. Which is just as well, really.’ Kathy Burke lights another ciggie and looks across Old Compton Street to the door of a prominent sex shop. She’s people watching – one of her favourite pastimes – from her usual table in a Soho café. ‘We sometimes catch the eye of some bloke coming out. They always look embarrassed.’ Burke has been described as a ‘national treasure’. And ‘the best British character actress of her generation’. And ‘Rita the Rottweiler’.…

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

    June 21, 2012

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

    January 5, 1997

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

    August 13, 1995

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