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Delta Burke

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Delta Burke
Delta Burke at the 1990 Emmy Awards
Birth name	Delta Ramona Leah Burke
Born	July 30 1956 (1956-07-30) (age 51) Orlando, Florida, U.S.
Spouse(s)	Gerald McRaney (May 28, 1989 - present)

Persondata
NAME	Burke, Delta
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	actress
DATE OF BIRTH	July 30, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH	Orlando, Florida, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

Delta Ramona Leah Burke (born July 30 1956 in Orlando, Florida) is an American television and film actress. She is probably best known for her role as Suzanne Sugarbaker in the sitcom Designing Women.

1 Miss Florida
2 Early career
3 Designing Women fallout
- 3.1 Weight gain
4 Recent Weight Loss
5 Recent career
6 Personal life
7 Selected filmography
8 Nonfiction
9 External links

Miss Florida

Burke attended Colonial High School in Orlando, Florida, where she was voted "Most Likely to Succeed." [1] After graduation, she won the Miss Florida title for 1974. Burke was paired with Miss Georgia, Gail Nelson, in the Miss America pageant in 1974, and won a talent scholarship allowing her to attend a two-year study program at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Early career

Delta's best-known role as Suzanne Sugarbaker in Designing Women was created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Before Designing Women, she spent a year on Filthy Rich (1982) playing the wily young widow, Kathleen Beck. After that, she played female football team owner Diane Barrow on 1st & Ten.

Designing Women fallout

Burke was slender when she started on "Designing Women" in 1986, but as the show gained in fame, so did her weight. She became the most popular cast member, earning two consecutive "Best Actress" nominations from the Emmys in 1990 and 1991. Her Suzanne Sugarbaker character was considered the funniest character on the show, and her delivery of the lines "Excuse me! Excuse me!" became something of a catchphrase. In 1990, Burke publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the shows creators on a televised interview with Barbara Walters and other media outlets. She also said that castmate Dixie Carter, who had once been her close friend and maid of honor at her wedding to Gerald McRaney, wasn't speaking to her as she sided with her bosses. At the end of the 5th season of "Designing Women," in 1991, she was let go from her contract due to her contentious relations with star Dixie Carter and the Thomasons. Delta became a blond for the short-lived TV sitcom Delta (1992), where she played an aspiring country singer. When the ratings plummeted, she became a brunette again to win over her fans. In 1995, she and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason reconciled their differences, and Burke returned back as Suzanne Sugarbaker in Women of the House (1995), but that show also had an early demise. It took more than a decade for Burke and Dixie Carter to reconcile, but they did so when Burke guest-starred on Family Law, which had Carter as a regular cast member.

Weight gain

Ever since the early 1990s, Delta's weight has been a subject of discussion in the tabloid press. In reality, her struggles with weight, depression, and eating disorders stretch back to her pageant days in the early 1970s. She became a much-parodied figure in the press due to her seesawing weight, including a skit on Saturday Night Live, wherein Leon Phelps from The Ladies Man has a sexual fixation on Burke, for reasons which were not explained. One popular theory is that he is a fat admirer of hers. In 1989, Burke took a dignified approach and asked Linda Bloodworth-Thomason to write an episode addressing her weight. The episode "They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?" had Suzanne Sugarbaker going to her 15-year high school reunion and getting her feelings hurt after hearing disparaging remarks about her weight. This episode is said to have earned Burke her first Emmy nomination as Best Actress. http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Emmy_Awards/1990) She earned a second nomination the following year.(http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Emmy_Awards/1991)

Recent Weight Loss

Burke recently lost about 60 pounds, due to her nearly 10-year battle with type-2 diabetes. She plans to keep on losing weight until she is back down to a normal size, in order to remain healthy, as well as so she could play the role of "Truvy" in the Broadway production of Steel Magnolias; a role that required her to be more slender.[2][3]

Recent career

Burke has stated that she will be reprising her role as "Noleta" in the upcoming 2008 Del Shores' TV series "Sordid Lives: The Series" (LOGO/MTV) based on the film "Sordid Lives" with Emmy winner Leslie Jordan.^[1] 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). In the early 2000s, she co-starred with David Alan Grier on the sitcom DAG; she had lost much of her excess weight for the role after being diagnosed with diabetes. She had a recurring role on Popular (TV series) as Cherry Cherry. In 2005 she appeared on Broadway in the play Steel Magnolias. She currently has a recurring role on Boston Legal as a former flame of William Shatner's character, Denny Crane named Bella Horowitz. Her character has an odd habit of tackling Denny. She and Denny seemed to rekindle their romance in the episode "On The Ledge".

Personal life

Burke has been married to actor Gerald McRaney since May 28, 1989. They have no children together, although McRaney has adult children from his prior marriages. Burke and McRaney's primary residence is in Los Angeles, California; they also own a house in Telluride, Colorado and one in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is a very successful designer and manager of the clothing company Delta Burke Design in New York City. She and her husband are also the owners of an antique store in Collins, MS.