Cast Spotlight - Kate Burton

Kate Burton was born in Geneva, Switzerland, the daughter of famed actor Richard Burton and producer Sybil Williams Burton. When she was young, her parents divorced and she moved with her mother to New York City. She spent the school year with her mother in NYC where she attended the United Nations School. In the summers, she would spend time with her father on sets or taking trips. After graduating from high school, she wanted to be a diplomat and attended Brown University studying history and Russian. She earned a bachelor degree in Russian Studies and European History. After spending a summer with a friend, who was a drama student, Kate decided that she wanted to try acting. She applied and was accepted into the Yale University School of Drama. She was cast in her first Broadway production, Noel Coward’s Present Laughter upon her graduation in 1982. Directed by George C. Scott, she was a success.

She followed that role with other Broadway fare, including the roles of JJ in Doonesbury, Lyssa Dent Huges in An American Daughter and Maureen Folan in The Beauty Queen of Leenane. In 2002, she was nominated for two Tony Awards for two roles that she played that year. She was nominated for Best Actress for her portrayal of the title role in Henrik Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler and for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role of Pinhead/Mrs. Kendal in The Elephant Man. Only four other actors have ever been nominated for two Tonys in the same year.

Kate has performed in other theater roles including in Chekov’s The Three Sisters (2003) at London’s Playhouse Theater, Helen in the Off-Broadway production of The Water’s Edge (2006), the Adult Woman in the Broadway production of Spring Awakenings (2007), the Ranevskaya in the The Cherry Orchard (2006) at Boston’s Huntington Theater and as Constance Middleton in Somerset Maughham’s The Constant’s Wife for which she was nominated for another Tony Award for Best Leading Actress.

Kate has also doen a wide variety of work for both the large and small screen. She had appeared in such films as The First Wive’s Club(1996), Swimfan(2002), Stay(2005), and Max Payne (2008).

Her most noticable roles, though, have been for Television. In addtion to guest starring in TV series such as Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Judging Amy, Numb3rs, Medium and The Good Wife, she has had re-occuring roles as ADA Susan Alexander in The Practice, Rose in Rescue Me and Ellis Grey in Grey’s Anatomy and Erica Gardner in Law and Order.









Sources:
The Independent.co.uk
IMDb.com
IBDB.com
Wikipedia.com