Robert John Burke is best known to audiences as a regular member of Hal Hartley's stock company of actors. After he graduated from S.U.N.Y. Purchase, he began acting in TV, appearing on such shows as As the World Turns, and Happy Days. His feature film debut came with The Chosen and continued with roles in Wanted Dead or Alive and the hit dance movie, Lambada.

Then he was cast in the lead role in Hal Hartley's first feature, The Unbelievable Truth. The movie garnered positive notices for Hartley's distinctly offbeat sensibility and his stars' deadpan, wry performances. Burke followed this with a supporting part in the Oscar-nominated Rambling Rose and the starring role, replacing Peter Weller, as the cyborg law enforcer in Robocop 3.

Burke alternated between independent movies and Hollywood projects. Working with Hartley again, he starred in Simple Men, Flirt, and No Such Thing. Mainstream movies included the children's adventure A Far Off Place, starring Reece Witherspoon and Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell. He also appeared in Oliver Stone's third Vietnam movie, Heaven and Earth, and starred as the cursed obese lawyer in Stephen King's Thinner.

Continuing to show his versatility in both comedy and drama, Burke appeared in the buddy chase movie Fled and starred in the bayou love story First Love, Last Rites. Burke returned to TV in the late '90s in two acclaimed HBO productions, the ambitious miniseries From the Earth to the Moon and the Vietnam War docudrama A Bright Shining Lie.