Film & TV / Theatre & dance / Food
David Burtka
born 1975 · actor, chef
Broadway and How I Met Your Mother actor turned professional chef, born in Dearborn and raised in Canton, where he graduated from Salem High School.
- Born
Dearborn, Michigan
age 51- Birth name
- David Michael Burtka
- Detroit years
- 1975–1990s
- Field
- Film & TV, Theatre & dance, Food
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
David Burtka was born in Dearborn in 1975 and grew up in Canton, a western Wayne County suburb, graduating from Salem High School in 1993. He trained at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in northern Michigan and earned a BFA at the University of Michigan before further study at New York's William Esper Studio. He made his Broadway debut as Tulsa in the 2003 revival of Gypsy opposite Bernadette Peters and later appeared in It Shoulda Been You (2015). Television viewers know him as Scooter, Lily's high school ex-boyfriend, on How I Met Your Mother. In Los Angeles he switched to the kitchen, graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena in 2009 and ran a catering company, later publishing cookbooks. He is married to actor Neil Patrick Harris.
Highlights
- Broadway debut in Gypsy (2003) with Bernadette Peters
- Scooter in How I Met Your Mother
- Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef; cookbook Life Is a Party (2019)
- Salem High School, Canton, class of 1993; BFA, University of Michigan
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · until 1993
Salem High School
Public high school on the Plymouth-Canton Educational Park campus; Burtka graduated in 1993.
Studied here · 1990s
University of Michigan
Burtka earned his BFA in theater here.