For slightly younger audiences, actor Jere Burns is perhaps most known for starring as Wynn Duffy in the Western crime drama Justified. He did a brilliant job portraying the ruthless, cold-blooded Duffy – a middle man in the Dixie Mafia.

But Burns has been active in the entertainment industry since 1970, and if you watched sitcoms during the ’80s, you probably recognize him as the sleazy Kirk Morris in Dear John.

Today, the Massachusetts-born actor is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, not long ago, he commented on a topic that confused his fans for years…

Jere Burns, whose given name is pronounced as Jerry, was born in 1954 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a gown manufacturer and his mom a homemaker, so Jere grew up without a clear connection to acting.

Instead, he played many sports and looked at himself as an athlete. He had no interest in drama or acting – until he started a private high school in Cambridge. There, he got exposed to something that would changed his life forever.

”We had this great little drama program. And I loved it. I loved the attention; I loved the response, I loved the girls, I loved the whole thing. But I had been an athlete too, so there was a little conflict there,” Jere said when interviewed on Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show.

After high school, Jere attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst and studied English. He didn’t have the guts to study drama or acting – partly because he didn’t see himself making a living out of it. Not only that, but growing up he felt he didn’t have any entertainment-based role models that he looked up to.

”From Boston, Massachusetts, you know – everybody is a doctor or a lawyer, a businessman or whatever. I didn’t know anyone that ever went in to show business,” he said.

But late in his college journey, Jere decided that he simply couldn’t let go of his dream of becoming an actor.

By 1970, he had already appeared in one episode of The Psychiatrist, a drama series that aired on NBC. During his last years at UMass, he took courses in acting and “muzzled” his way into many leading roles.