Biography

Martyn Burke (born 1952) is a Canadian director, novelist and screenwriter from Toronto, Ontario. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, to Freda and Les Burke who immigrated from England to Canada during World War II as part of the British Civilian Military Authority, Martyn Burke graduated from Royal York High School in Toronto, Ontario. He attended McMaster University, where he played on the football team, the McMaster Marauders, and graduated with a degree in economics. After a brief stint working in television programming for a major advertiser, Burke paid his own way over to Viet Nam to work as a freelance journalist and photographer covering the war. His experience reporting on the Viet Nam War was the beginning of his writing and filmmaking career and served as the background for his first novel, Laughing War which was short-listed for a Books in Canada First Novel Award.

In 2018, the BBC listed the Paramount Pictures film Top Secret!, which Burke co-wrote, as one of the top one hundred film comedies of all time.

In 2012 he won the Peabody Award and was short-listed for an Academy Award for the film Under Fire: Journalists In Combat; in 2015 he was named winner of the Auteur Award by the International Press Association in Los Angeles; and in 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.Burke lives in Santa Monica, California with his wife, Laura Morton.