Section:GDN 12 PaGe:4 Edition Date:190807 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/8/2019 18:21 cYanmaGentaYellowblac
- The Guardian
4 Wednesday 7 August 2019
‘People are making
money out of
our insecurities’
K athy Burke
is distracted. It’s the hottest day
of the year, and she is desperate
for a fag and a brew. “I’m gasping,”
she says, disappearing outside for
a couple of minutes before we start
our interview. “It’s so hot, mate,”
she says, when she reappears.
“I wouldn’t normally leave the
house on a day like this.” Then,
just when I seem to have her full
attention, her eyes dart upwards as
she catches sight of a TV screen in
the bar we are sitting in. “Sorry,” she
says, sounding stressed. “I’m just
distracted by Boris Johnson.”
With another interviewee, this
turn of events would feel stressful –
as if you are never going to be able
to get their attention. But with
Burke, it’s quite the opposite. As
she tacks another aff ectionate
“babe” on to the end of a sentence
or triumphantly declares: “That’s
such a good cup of tea,” she is very
much in the room with you. She is,
of course , described by fans and
critics as being “natural” and “down
to earth”. Burke, people say, is a Real
Person, citing incidents such as the
letter she sent to Time Out magazine
in the 90s, calling out Helena
Bonham Carter for complaining
about being posh and pretty. In
the letter, she referred to herself
as “a lifelong member of the non-
pretty working classes”, and signed
off with a four-letter word. More
recently, there was her Twitter feed,
where she referred to the “twats”and “dicks” who run the world –
most recently, those supporting gun
rights in the US.
The 55-year-old’s work has ranged
from brash comic characters, such
as Gimme Gimme Gimme’s Linda
La Hughes (usually found snogging
a poster of Liam Gallagher), to
a domestic abuse victim opposite
Ray Winstone in the fi lm Nil By
Mouth (for which she won best
actress at Cannes in 1997) to a host of
stage credits as a director. However,
perhaps her best-known role is as
Burke herself – the unluvviest luvvie
of them all, who resides within
a sought-after Islington postcode
by default, having been born there
to an Irish immigrant family. Does
all this talk of her “normalness”
ever get boring? “I like it, it’s fi ne,”
she laughs. “It’s much better than
being described as aloof or in your
own bubble.”
It is exactly Burke’s relatable,
national-treasure status that has
led to her latest project: a three-
part documentary about what it is
to be a woman today, dealing with
the themes of beauty and image;
work and motherhood; and sex
and relationships. The producers
came to her, she says, “because
I’m quite normal, I think”. And,
in the programme, whether she
is interviewing the Love Island
contestant Megan Barton-Hanson,
an Anglican nun or members of
the sweary Profanity Embroidery
Group (“like the punk version of the
WI”), you get the sense that she is
someone people think they already
know. Nobody, she says, “seemed
that shy around me”. And, of course,
she is very funny – off ering her own
withering perspectives as she fi nds
out about her subjects’ lives and
challenges. Among them, a man
who has had an aff air and bought
a Jag isn’t going through a midlifecrisis, “he’s a fucking twat”. And,
on discovering the existence
of the “vajacial”, a facial-style
vagina treatment: “Steam your
fanny – fuck off !”
One of her favourite subjects was
the rapper Nadia Rose, whom she
interviewed about the pressures
of the music industry, in particular
when it comes to looks (“What a girl!
She is great at what she does, and
she expresses it – it’s so refreshing”),
while Barton-Hanson, who discusses
how she has had plastic surgery to
further her “infl uencer” career, was
a revelation. “I liked what she had to
say; she’s in control of herself.”
Burke has often spoken about
the challenges of growing up in an
all-male household (her mother,
Bridget, died of cancer when Burke
was a baby). At the all-girl convent
school she went to, she has said
she was known as “the little fella
in a skirt” because she was so
tomboyish. She has had to wrestle
with the societal expectation –
which she describes as “a crock
of shit” – that at some point, sheshould have married and had kids.
The reason she hasn’t is simple: she
didn’t want to. She is single at the
moment, but says she hasn’t entirely
sworn off another relationship. It’s
just that she is perfectly content
without being in one.
After Burke’s win at Cannes ,
she left London for a brief stint in
Hollywood , appearing opposite
Meryl Streep in the 1998 period
drama Dancing at Lughnasa, about
a group of unmarried sisters in
1930s Ireland. “I sound like such an
ungrateful wanker now,” she laughs.
“But the more successful I became
as an actor, the less control I had.
I became more of a puppet, really.
It certainly felt like that, at least.”
There is a powerful scene in the fi rst
documentary, in which she goes to
visit the photographer Rankin, who
she asks – in the way that she does –
for “a little bit of turd-polishing”.
While she is in his studio, he shows
her some photographs he took of
her at the turn of the millennium ,
when her career was taking off.
“I remember that period in my life
so strongly because I was in a really
bad place,” she says, recounting
“a breakdown” she had in the late
90s, at around the time she was in
Hollywood. “It really pissed me
off. I was, like, why am I suddenly
attractive now that I’m skinny?”
Her appearance proved
particularly pertinent during the
making of the documentary; just
before she was due to start fi lming,
she was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy,
a condition that causes temporary
facial paralysis. For Burke, it brought
back painful memories of 2007,
when she contracted the superbug
C diffi cile in hospital when she
was being treated for other health
problems. She almost died, and was
out of work for a year, so falling ill
again was another blow. “It was such
a shock,” she says. “It was, like, oh
my God. What’s happened? But the
production company were brilliant –
luckily the executive producer had
had it as a kid, so she knew exactly
what it entailed and how long it
would take for me to get better.”
She had acupuncture, which helped
a lot, and it is not noticeable on
screen. “Basically,” she deadpans, “it
would’ve been better if my face was
moving, than if it wasn’t.”
I wonder what it is like for
someone who never knew their own
mother to make a documentary
about motherhood. Despite being
raised around men – her father and
two brothers – she has always had
strong relationships with otherKathy Burke
has made a new
documentary series
about women’s lives
today. She discusses
power, single life
and skinniness with
Hannah J Davies
The more
successful I
became as an
actor, the less
control I had
PORTRAITS BY SARAH LEE/THE GUARDIAN; RANKINThe Rankin portrait
of Burke, taken
in 1994 ( far left);
Burke with
Megan Barton-
Hanson from
Love Island (left)РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS