Tom Burke is incapable of being dull. This is something the Academy Award–winning director Steven Soderbergh picked up on before casting him alongside Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in his latest film, Black Bag.
But Burke wasn’t always so outgoing. Despite his role as the fearless, titular lead in the television adaptation of J. K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike crime series, Burke, growing up in an idyllic cottage in Kent, was painfully shy, struggling with severe dyslexia and insecurity, especially about the scar down his face from cleft-lip surgery. Even with all of this, his parents—Royal Shakespeare Company alumni David Burke and Anna Calder-Marshall—introduced him to the stage at a young age.
At eight years old, Burke started at Perry Court, a local Steiner school that prioritized creativity and the arts over a more traditional education model. It was there that Burke found his stride.
“I just think I had really great teachers,” he says, reflecting on the seminal lesson that acting was “all about not illustrating what you’re doing, and letting the director worry about what’s being picked up or not.”
This early training paid off, helping Burke, at 16 years old, to claim a prized spot in the prestigious National Youth Theatre, whose alumni include everyone from Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet to Daniel Day-Lewis and Colin Firth.
When it came time for university, two years later, Burke was accepted into London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art—attended by Cynthia Erivo, Tom Hiddleston, and Aimee Lou Wood—graduating in 2002.
Professional acting roles swiftly followed. What started with a small part on Bill Nighy’s State of Play, in 2003, led to a steady stream of appearances in BBC mini-series, including Great Expectations, in 2011. But Burke never strayed far from the stage or silver screen: he acted alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2010 film Third Star and took to the stage at London’s Almeida Theatre in a 2011 production of Neil LaBute’s Reasons to Be Pretty.
Now 43, Burke excels at complex and brooding roles, such as Fedya Dolokhov in the 2016 series War & Peace, with Lily James and James Norton, and as Anthony, an Oxbridge-educated civil servant in Joanna Hogg’s semi-autobiographical feature film, The Souvenir, which took home the Grand Jury Prize for drama at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
Currently Burke stars alongside Blanchett in a six-week run of Chekhov’s The Seagull at London’s Barbican Theatre. “[Blanchett] has the genius, the skill set, and the talent to be a soloist, and she just doesn’t want to be,” says Burke. “She wants to be part of the band, and that’s what’s so thrilling about working with her.”
In what could have been a sleek James Bond derivative, Black Bag had an unexpected tone that drew Burke to Soderbergh’s espionage thriller. “He doesn’t tend to give notes,” says Burke of the Ocean’s 11 director. Instead, “he’s excited at the prospect of being surprised by whatever you’re going to do.”
Equal parts Mr. & Mrs. Smith and workplace drama (akin to Slow Horses or Black Doves), Black Bag throbs with style and wit, propelled by an ensemble that includes Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Naomie Harris, Pierce Brosnan, and Regé-Jean Page. “It goes into so many different places,” Burke says. “That’s much more interesting.”
Today, more than 25 years into his career, Burke has overcome much of the fear and overwhelm he felt stepping into the profession. “I love it more now than I ever did.”
Black Bag is in theaters now. The Seagull runs at London’s Barbican Theatre through April 5
Bridget Arsenault is a Writer at Large at Air Mail
