Kathy Burke profile

From Comic to Drama
Kathy first started acting in 1986 in films like Sid and Nancy in supporting parts but it wasn't long before she became a household name thanks to her performances in BBC comedy series such as Absolutely Fabulous. In her late 20's she went from comedy queen playing Patsy's editor Magda, to incarnating many faces for Harry Enfield and Chums series, and finally onto drama. It worked. In 1993 she even received the Royal Television Society's Best Actress Award for her part as the handicapped Martha in Danny Boyle's Mr. Wroe's Virgins. Just two years later, she was awarded a Cannes Festival's Palme and nominated for a BAFTA for her role as an abused, pregnant wife in Gary Oldman's harrowing Nil by Mouth.

Movie madness
In 1998 Kathy went on to star in Elizabeth, playing the unforgiving Mary Tudor, followed by another high profile part in Dancing at Lughnasa with Meryl Streep. Next up came This Year's Love, a romcom where she donned an airport cleaning woman's attire set against falling in love. But by then the spark had gone. She says: " I've been doing it since I was 17 and it doesn't matter what job you're in, you're going to get a bit sick of it after 20 years. I had no desire to be a film actress but if you win a big award like that then suddenly all these scripts are there and you've got to make really quick decisions and it was like crumbs, all of a sudden I'm a film actress". Before she knew it she was hoping to get fired from Dancing at Lughnasa! "On the second day I was thinking, I hope I get the sack."

Getting out of the game
By 2002 she announced her intent to quit acting for a while. She remembers: "suddenly I was back on a film set at five in the morning and just sat round not using my brain and basically bored, really really bored. And I thought, oh fuck this. I rang up my agent Stephen and I said, 'Look, I don't want to act. I want to be available for theatre directing." Kathy thought it was just a phase but it seems more serious. "I thought I'd get a buzz back for acting and want to go back but it hasn't happened at all. I get a great deal of job satisfaction from directing. I stopped acting because I was starting not to love it and I thought that would come across to the audience."

Director's cut
It's official: her new passion is directing. Turning down several key parts, she switched to producing three London plays in a year and didn't stop there. She has now directed eight plays including Brendan Behan's massively successful The Quare Fellow. Kathy loves bringing a production together: "It's just getting the whole thing together - it's all down to your choice and your taste. You decide who designs it, who the lighting person is, what music to use then you choose your cast. That's really important to me - I like to get a cast together of people who don't have massive egos, who will work together as a team to tell the same story."

A difficult start
Kathy makes no secret of her tough childhood. She grew up in foster care after her mother died of cancer when she was just a 2-year-old toddler. At the age of 6 she was back with her father, an alcoholic Irish builder with a tendency for violence, and her two older brothers. At 16 she enrolled in her local acting school in Islington. The Anna Scher school helped her get her first part in just one year. She admits though that her twenties were something of an alcoholic haze. Today she attributes her experiences to the choice of plays she directs. "I grew up with death because of mum dying when I was 18 months old. I grew up with that word, that feeling of an empty void. Maybe it is something I am attracted to because it's something I understand. I'm not afraid of it, let's say."


Did you know?

She turned down a part in Harry Potter.

She featured in a Morrissey video.

She loves Parkie. She says: "I'm mad about him. I'd pin him to the floor and snog the face off him - I don't care how old he is - he's sex on legs"

She has been a veggie for 20 years.

She likes Noel Coward. "I think he was the original punk in a lot of ways. You know. Saucy. Doing his own thing."

And what about Waynetta?
Kathy says she'll never play Waynetta again. Apparently she's dead. "Waynetta exploded after eating too much pizza".