Steve Burns

Steve Burns (born October 9, 1973, in Boyertown, PA, is best-known for his stint as host of the popular Nickelodeon children’s television show Blue’s Clues. Burns hosted the show starting with its inception in 1996 and continuing through 2002, at which time the character Joe (portrayed by Donovan Patton) took over hosting duties.

In the fall of 1998, an urban legend began circulating on the Internet that Burns had died from a heroin overdose. To counter this rumor, Steve made an appearance on the Rosie O’Donnell Show to confirm his good health. The legend may have started from Burns’ appearance as an autistic teenager in an April 1995 episode of Law & Order, in which his character died before the opening credits. Burns’ “overdose” may also have been simply another iteration of a subgenre of urban legend in which celebrity figures whose public personas are associated with innocence are supposedly revealed to have a hidden, seedier side. According to a 15 minute documentary on Nickelodeon, titled “The 10 years of Blue”, Burns left Blue’s Clues because he was losing his hair and he did not want kids to know he was going bald.