Kathy Burke reveals the reason she quit acting

Kathy Burke says she decided to give up acting because she found it so boring to only ever talk about her own character.

The former actor who starred in Kevin & Perry, Gimme Gimme Gimme and the film Elizabeth now works mainly as a theatre director, but has directed an ITV adaptation of Graham Norton's book Holding.

Burke, 57, said that she had made sure to get the stars of Holding to spend a lot of time together talking through their relationships before filming began, because she hated not working that way so much that it made her give up acting.

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She told Yahoo and other media: "When I used to work as an actor, it seemed very much you just talked about your own character, you didn't really give an input on anybody else, and I just found that quite ludicrous really.

"It was one of the reasons I wanted to stop being an actor, it was just like, 'god, this is so f***ing boring.'

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"An hour (of cast talking) can give you two minutes on screen, but it's so fizzy and spicy and exciting just from an open conversation."

Burke also said one of the things that had drawn her to take on a rare TV project was that Derry Girls star Siobhan McSweeney and Conleth Hill (Game of Thrones, Dublin Murders) had been cast as the leads.

She said: "People like Siobhan McSweeney and Conleth Hill are not usually the leading actors. They're usually the supporting actors, 'oh I love that one that does the supporting role, if only they'd be the lead' and it never happens.

"With Holding, it's happened and it's just wonderful."

Explaining more about why she had decided to make an exception and work in TV rather than theatre, she said: "Usually I say no to telly directing, I'm a theatre director, that's what I love.

"But because of the pandemic and lockdown I'd listened to the book and Graham (Norton) reading Holding and I really enjoyed it.

"Then when my manager said Dominic Treadwell Collins wants you to have a look at this TV project I said no immediately. Then (when they told me what it was) I said how interesting, I've just listened to the book."

Holding begins on Monday, 14 March at 9pm on ITV.

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