Kathy Burke

Kathy Burke was born in Hampstead, London in 1964 and studied at the Anna Scher Theatre School in Islington. Her first stage roles came in her 20s, which saw her appear in Who’s Left and The Hungry Ghost at the Old Red Lion Theatre.

Her breakthrough, though, came when she appeared on the BBC comedy show Harry Enfield’s Television Programme in the early 1990s. She played Waynetta, one-half of the chain-smoking, working class couple Wayne and Waynetta, alongside Harry Enfield. The pair went on to star in Kevin and Perry Go Large, based on one of Enfield’s equally slobbish teenage characters.

In 1993, Burke won a Royal Television Society Award for her role n the drama Mr Wroe's Virgins.  In the 2000s, she starred in Gimme Gimme Gimme, written by playwright Jonathan Harvey. She played Linda alongside James Dreyfus, and she won Best Comedy Actress at the 2002 British Comedy Awards.

Burke’s recent stage work has focused on directing. In 2013 she directed Once a Catholic, Mary O'Malley’s play about an all-girl Catholic school preparing for their exams at the Tricycle Theatre. She also directed Moira Buffini’s 2007 play Dying for It at the Almeida Theatre, and Sam Shepard’s The God of Hell at the Donmar Warehouse. In November 2017, Burke directed The Retreat at the Park Theatre, then directed Lady Windermere's Fan at the Vaudeville Theatre the following year.