His motion picture credits include Jane Austen's Mafia!, Along Came a Spider, Final Jeopardy, Flashpoint, Ladder 49, Fracture, and Three Days to Vegas.

He appeared in Feast of Love (2007), co-starring Selma Blair and Morgan Freeman, and he played Detective Eric Box in the film Untraceable (2008) with Diane Lane.

In February 2010, Burke was cast as Jonah King, the primary antagonist featured in the thriller Drive Angry,[6] which was directed by Patrick Lussier[7] and co-starred Amber Heard, Nicolas Cage, and William Fichtner.

[11] Burke reprised his role in The Closer (Season 7, episode 16, "Hostile Witness," playing the rapist and murderer, attorney Phillip Stroh).

He returned as Phillip Stroh in a recurring role in the "Closer" spin-off Major Crimes with an ongoing impact on the show through its finale in 2018.

He has recently starred in Maid, a new Netflix series created by Molly Smith Metzler and inspired by Stephanie Land's memoir "Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive", that premiered globally on October 1, 2021 and became one of the most watched shows in many different countries, earning several nominations at the 2022 AFI Awards, Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes.