Warren Burke is about the fundamentals of the craft!

Cox: You have a journey when it comes to acting, please tell me about your start.
Burke: Well, when I first started acting, I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in January 2002. There I learned a variety of acting fundamentals: drama, comedy, improv and voice diction. I left the conservatory because I knew I needed to learn about the craft and business. So, I enrolled in various studios so I could equip myself with the necessary skills and knowledge to be the best. I learned script analysis at Tasha Smith’s acting workshop and camera presence at Margie Haber Studio. 

It was Margie Haber whom Warren attests to seeing his comedic acting potential because of her suggestion he “doubled down” on focusing on his strong suit. This led him to enroll in The Groundlings Theatre & School. 

Cox: Warren you never stop in your learning pursuit of the craft.
Burke: Mike, it’s because the art and business of acting are like a professional sport. I’m going to use basketball as an example. When you start basketball in high school there is junior varsity and varsity. Then after that, you get to the collegiate level. There are levels to it. Think Mike then you go professional or overseas and then you have All-Stars and the Olympics. So, this is how I look at acting. I’m always working to get to the next level.

Cox: Did you always have a love for entertainment?
Burke: I was about seven years old and I was watching Family Matters with my family. The way in particular Jamel White had my family laugh and engaged was so astonishing to me. I was like wait, if he could do this I could too. This is when I knew I wanted to do it.

The character of Urke resonated with Warren at a young age because of the representation. He saw himself in the character being also a young black boy from the southside of Chicago. This led to him writing to Oscar Myer for their back-then kid competition. He wrote a letter to apply like all kids did back then and asked his mother to mail it in. She said okay but he discovered it weeks later when he walked into her doctor’s office seeing that same letter on her desk. It was a defining moment because from there he believed that it wasn’t going to be a career path for him.

Cox: You had a late start in entertainment, what did you do before moving to Los Angeles?
Burke: So, I went the traditional route to play it safe. After high school, I went off and graduated from Tennessee State University with a degree in Marketing. Then I moved to Des Moines, Iowa and got a job at a local newspaper company. It was here I knew that the 9 to 5 life wasn’t going to be for me. 

Warren had a moment he likes to describe as a “Jesus in the wilderness moment.” This epiphany made Warren question everything because he just graduated from a four-year university doing exactly what he went to school for, but he wasn’t satisfied. He should have been because it was 2009, the country was in a recession, people were jobless, and he was living the American dream. It was that same year he took his leap of faith on December 25th when he packed up everything and moved to Los Angeles. 

Cox: You mentioned a conversation with your parents that was significant in your decision to leave Iowa.
Burke: After I started feeling lost, I was trying to call my people to just listen to me, but no one was picking up. So, I started going to church and meditating. I began to ask those life questions: What am I doing here and what am I supposed to be doing with my life? Then it was funny because I was watching The Office, one of my favorite shows. I started to notice I could state what would happen in the next scenes before they happened. I knew that this type of energy existed outside of me just predicting a scene, someone is writing this and someone is acting it as a career.

Cox: So this leap of faith, what was the moment that was had that made you take it?
Burke: I’ll never forget I saw a friend make a Facebook post intended as a joke. The post said, “Just got off the plane in LA and about to make it as an actor, y’all know I could never do that. This was the moment I was like why would you joke If you want to be an actress you need to go for it. I caught myself on this web for the rest of the day telling myself if I want to do something I should do it and that I can do it. 

Burke (continued): I started researching people’s origin stories in entertainment. I went down this rabbit hole studying celebrities like Kevin Hart, Leonardo Dicaprio, and Johnny Deep. The common theme I found was that they all had their start points but they chose to embark on their journeys.
Burke (continued): So Mike after this research and going back and forth in my head, I decided I’m going to be an actor. I took a sick day off work and flew to LA to audition for The American Academy. First, I took a taxi that was $70 to the Motel Six in Hollywood where I was staying. I went to the audition and recited two monologues: Julius Caesar and The Dutch Man. Then when I got back to my desk Monday morning I’m sitting there like what did I just do? From there the rest is history.

Photo Credit: Jasmine Durhal