Rhonda Burchmore

Born in Sydney, Burchmore has been performing since the age of two, trained in singing, acting and dancing and was awarded a scholarship to the University of New England where she majored in Theatre Arts.

She became internationally known for her role as Kate in the 1982 film, The Pirate Movie.

Burchmore gave her first major Australian theatre breakthrough performance in the 1988 production of Sugar Babies opposite Garry McDonald and Broadway theatre performer Eddie Bracken. Later that year, she reprised her role opposite Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller in London's West End theatre production. Whilst in the U.K., she also starred in the revival of Stop the World – I Want to Get Off.

After a string of further stage performances, playwright David Atkins wrote a role especially for Burchmore in his tap dancing musical Hot Shoe Shuffle. Then in 1997, she gave the Crown Casino in Melbourne its opening performance with her very own cabaret spectacular, Red Hot & Rhonda, playing to an audience of over 60,000. The year proved to be big for Burchmore, she also secured a role on Broadway in the Irving Berlin classic, Easter Parade, and later appeared in another show, Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods with the Melbourne Theatre Company.