Burke was born on July 30, 1956 in Orlando, Florida to a single mother, Jean.[3] Frederick Burke, an Orlando realtor, adopted her after marrying her mother. Burke has never met her biological father.[3] She has two younger siblings, Jonathan and Jennifer.[4]
Burke graduated from Colonial High School in 1974 and won the senior superlative "Most Likely to Succeed."[5] In 1972, she won the Miss Flame crown from the Orlando Fire Department and became Miss Flame for the state. In her senior year of high school, she won the Miss Florida title for 1974,[6] and she was the youngest titleholder in pageant history.[7] Burke won a talent scholarship from the Miss America Organization, allowing her to attend a two-year study program at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.[8]
Career
Early career
In 1974, as part of winning Miss Florida, Burke appeared on the ABC television show Bozo the Clown, filmed in Orlando. A 2001 episode of Lost Treasures of NFL Films contains film footage of her appearance as Miss Florida at the World Football League's World Bowl that same year.
In 1980, Burke portrayed the role of the second Bonnie Sue Chisholm in the CBSwesternminiseriesThe Chisholms. She spent a year on Filthy Rich in 1982 playing wily young widow Kathleen Beck. After that, she played football-team owner Diane Barrow on 1st & Ten from 1984 to 1986.
Designing Women
In 1986, Burke left 1st and Ten when she was cast as Suzanne Sugarbaker in the CBS sitcom Designing Women, a show created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who had previously cast Burke in her show Filthy Rich. The show was set at an interior design firm in Atlanta headed by four women, and Burke was one of the show's four female leads. (Dixie Carter, another of the leads, had been the lead actress on Filthy Rich.) The show struggled in the ratings and was briefly canceled after its first year,[9] but in 1989 began to receive respectable ratings after being paired with the sitcom Murphy Brown. Burke became the show's breakout star[10] and earned two consecutive nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1990 and 1991. She was the only lead female cast member of the show to be nominated.
In 1990, Burke publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the show during a televised interview with Barbara Walters and in interviews with other media outlets. She asserted on Entertainment Tonight that there was a labor dispute and that actors were often forced to work more than 15 hours per day, with executives even blocking the doors to keep actors on set. She also said that Carter, who had once been her close friend and maid of honor at her wedding to Gerald McRaney, was not speaking to her, as Carter sided with her bosses. At the end of the fifth season of Designing Women in 1991, Burke was fired from the show as a result of her contentious relations with Carter and Bloodworth-Thomason.[2]
1990s
Burke was given her own vehicle with the sitcom Delta in 1992, in which she portrayed an aspiring country music singer. She dyed her hair blonde for the role.[11] When ratings plummeted, Burke became a brunette again. The series was canceled after one season. In 1995, Burke and Bloodworth-Thomason reconciled their differences, and Burke returned as Suzanne Sugarbaker in the Designing Women spinoff Women of the House (1995), but the show failed after one season.
It took more than a decade for Burke and Carter to reconcile, but Burke guest-starred on an episode of Family Law, a show on which Carter was a regular cast member.
Weight issues
Since the early 1990s, Burke's weight has been a subject of discussion in the tabloid press.[2][11] Her struggles with weight, depression and eating disorders stretch back to her pageant days in the early 1970s. She became a much-parodied figure because of frequent media coverage about her weight, including a sketch on Saturday Night Live. In 1989, Burke asked Bloodworth-Thomason to write a Designing Women episode addressing her weight. In the "They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?" episode, Suzanne Sugarbaker attends her 15-year high-school reunion and her feelings are hurt after hearing disparaging remarks about her weight. Her performance on this episode is believed to have led to her first Emmy nomination.[12]
Later career
Burke has been a leading actress in a number of television films and had a supporting role in the Mel Gibson film What Women Want (2000).[11]
In the early 2000s, she costarred with David Alan Grier on the sitcom DAG. She had lost much of her excess weight for the role after being diagnosed with diabetes.
Burke made her Broadway debut in September 2003 when she starred as Mrs. Meers in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie.[13] She was the third actress to play the role in the production after Harriet Harris and Terry Burrell. She played the role until February 2004 before being succeeded by her Designing Women costar Carter.[14] Burke then played the role of Truvy in the original Broadway production of Steel Magnolias, playing the role for the show's entire four-month run from April 4—July 31, 2005.[15]
In March 2012, Burke was cast in the ABC comedy pilot Counter Culture.[17] However, after Burke fell while on set, production of the pilot was suspended and the show did not become a series.
Burke is a supporter of gay rights,[18] and has worked with openly gay playwright and screenwriter Del Shores on many occasions, in Sordid Lives and Southern Baptist Sissies.[18] In 2006, Burke and openly gay Tennessee actor Leslie Jordan were uninvited from the Nashville talk show Talk of the Town after the show's managing director decided that the subject matter would offend conservative viewers.[19] Burke first became attached to the cause when attending acting school in London.[18]
Burke is a designer and manager of the clothing company Delta Burke Design, headquartered in New York City.[11] She and McRaney also own an antiques store in Collins, Mississippi.
Burke has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes[20][21] and has compulsive hoarding syndrome, for which she has received therapy. She said: "At one time I had 27 storage units. I don't have a big enough house! My mom had it, it's my mother's fault. She saved the diaper I came home from the hospital in!"[22]
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