Kathy Burke: ‘Lifelong member of the non-pretty working classes’

That’s how Kathy Burke describes herself. But the famously outspoken actor and director has proved she can’t be pigeonholed. Stefanie Marsh meets her

Midday at a café in Finsbury Park, north London: the Harvey Weinstein story has just broken and, less widely reported, the revelation that Margaret Thatcher knew about Cyril Smith’s child sex abuse during her tenure as prime minister, but had him knighted anyway. Kathy Burke, who came of age in the 1970s, is mulling over recent events; thoughtful seriousness cut through with bursts of laughter. What she has to say makes me think that when women complain that there aren’t any female role models, perhaps they’re looking in the wrong places: here she is.

“Growing up in the 70s,” she says, “if you were a girl or woman, a man could tell you what to do – if you were sitting on the bus: ‘Get up,’ ‘Move,’ whatever. You did what you were told.” But Burke’s doing-as-she-was-told phase didn’t last long. “I got some backbone and realised, no, I don’t need to be spoken to like this.”

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2iHS2ic