Michael Bay
Birthdate: Feb 17, 1965
Birthplace: Los Angeles, California, USA
Michael Bay (adopted name: Michael Benjamin Bay), the filmmaker behind the Transformers and Bad Boys series as well as high-octane action movies The Rock (1996), Armageddon (1998), and Ambulance (2022), is two things at once. Bay is one of this era’s most commercially successful producer-directors (with a total global b.o. cume of nearly $8 billion) and one of its most reviled by journalists: His movies average a poor score in the low-to-mid 40s (with individual movie scores as low as the 20s) on the web aggregator site of critical reviews, Metacritic.com, and he has been nominated twice by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists for the Sexist Pig Award.
Michael Bay’s first moviemaking gig was at age 15 as a storyboarding intern with producer George Lucas on director Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Certain that the movie would fail, Bay was surprised at the final results and determined that he would become a filmmaker. He studied cinema at both Wesleyan University and the Pasadena-based Art Center College of Design before launching a lucrative career as a music video and commercial director, winning multiple Cleo awards for his TV ads.
Across a decade and five enormously successful blockbusters, Michael Bay teamed with producer Jerry Bruckheimer for one of the highest-earning director-producer partnerships in recent Hollywood history. They included Bad Boys (1995), launching Will Smith’s career as a bankable movie star; The Rock (1996), starring Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris; disaster movie Armageddon (1998), starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, and Billy Bob Thornton; his first-period movie, Pearl Harbor (2001), starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, and Kate Beckinsale; and Bad Boys II (2003), reuniting Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.
Working apart from Bruckheimer, Michael Bay’s output has been more erratic, with his subsequent four Transformers sequels from 2009 to 2017 increasingly bemoaned for their lack of narrative logic in favor of pure action spectacle. Nevertheless, Bay displayed an entirely different side to his filmmaking personality with the wonderful and underrated crime comedy, Pain & Gain (2013), starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
While investing in businesses creating interactive media, the technologically-savvy Bay has turned his moviemaking attention to streaming as a producer in partnership with actor-writer-director John Krasinski (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (2018-2019)) and with Krasinski on the successful A Quiet Place series, and also as director-producer on Netflix’s 6 Underground (2019), starring Ryan Reynolds. In 2022, Bay returned to the theatrical big screen with a typically brawny entertainment, Ambulance, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen, and Eiza González.
Personal Details
Los Angeles-born Michael Bay was an adopted child, raised by Jim and Harriet (Markowitz) Bay, a bookstore owner and child psychiatrist. His cousin Susan is the widow of Star Trek star Leonard Nimoy. A graduate of Crossroads School, Bay attended Wesleyan University as an English and Film major and studied film as a graduate student at the Art Center College of Design. He had a relationship with sportscaster and ex-Playboy Playmate Lisa Dergan. He is not married and without children. His height is 6’. His net worth is estimated as of 2022 at $450 million.
Filmography
actor
Upcoming (1)
Previous (56)
- 2023 | Apartment 7A
- 2023 | The Caretaker
- 2022 | MEAT LOAF: A Celebration of Life
- 2021 | Untitled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Paramount Project
- 2020 | Songbird
- 2020 | Bad Boys for LifeasWedding MC
Bad Boys for Life
Miami detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett must face off against a mother-and-son pair of drug lords who wreak vengeful havoc on their city.
- 2019 | 6 Underground
- 2019 | Black 5
- 2019 | I Am Yours
- 2019 | Life on Mars
- 2018 | Drone Fighter
- 2018 | Meet Jimmy
- 2017 | Hunting El Chapo
- 2017 | Little America
- 2016 | Northeast Kingdom
- 2016 | The Rising
- 2015 | Cosmic Motors
- 2014 | Lure
- 2014 | Time Salvager
- 2014 | Untitled Michael Bay/Underwater Adventure Project
- 2014 | Untitled Rwanda Cycling Project
- 2014 | Transformers: Age of ExtinctionasProducer
Transformers: Age of Extinction
When humanity allies with a bounty hunter in pursuit of Optimus Prime, the Autobots turn to a mechanic and his family for help.
- 2013 | Pain & Gain
- 2013 | Raindrop
- 2013 | Pain & Gain
Pain & Gain
A trio of bodybuilders in Florida get caught up in an extortion ring and a kidnapping scheme that goes terribly wrong.
- 2012 | Robopocalypse
- 2011 | Confidential Alien Project
- 2011 | Property of the State
- 2011 | The Raid
- 2011 | Transformers: Dark of the Moon
- 2010 | A Man's Story
- 2010 | A Nightmare on Elm Street
- 2010 | Gideon's Sword
- 2010 | The Hauntrepreneur
- 2009 | Friday the 13th
- 2009 | Ghost Recon
- 2009 | Horsemen
- 2009 | The Unborn
- 2009 | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallenas Producer
- 2008 | Armored
- 2008 | Duke Nukem
- 2007 | Fiasco Heights
- 2007 | Heatseekers
- 2007 | Lockdown
- 2007 | The Hitcher
- 2007 | Transformers
- 2006 | The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
- 2005 | Lure
- 2003 | Bad Boys II
- 2003 | The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- 2002 | Existence 2.0
- 2001 | Pearl Harbor
- 1998 | Armageddonas Producer
- 1998 | Zombies vs. Robots
- 1996 | The Rockas Director
- 1995 | Bad Boys
producer
Previous (15)
- 2024 | A Quiet Place: Day One
A Quiet Place: Day One
A young woman named Sam finds herself trapped in New York City during the early stages of an invasion by alien creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing.
- 2021 | The Forever Purge
The Forever Purge
All the rules are broken as a sect of lawless marauders decides that the annual Purge does not stop at daybreak and instead should never end.
- 2021 | A Quiet Place Part II
A Quiet Place Part II
Following the events at home, the Abbott family now face the terrors of the outside world. Forced to venture into the unknown, they realize the creatures that hunt by sound are not the only threats lurking beyond the sand path.
- 2021 | The Reckoning
The Reckoning
Grace, a young widow haunted by the recent suicide of her husband Joseph, is falsely accused of being a witch by her Landlord after she rejects his advances.
- 2018 |
- 2018 | The First Purge
The First Purge
America's third political party, the New Founding Fathers of America, comes to power and conducts an experiment: no laws for 12 hours on Staten Island. No one has to stay on the island, but $5,000 is given to anyone who does.
- 2018 | A Quiet Place
A Quiet Place
A family struggles for survival in a world where most humans have been killed by blind but noise-sensitive creatures. They are forced to communicate in sign language to keep the creatures at bay.
- 2016 | Ouija: Origin of Evil
Ouija: Origin of Evil
In 1967 Los Angeles, a widowed mother and her daughters add a new stunt to bolster their seance scam business by inviting an evil presence into their home, not realizing how dangerous it is.
- 2016 | The Purge: Election Year
The Purge: Election Year
Former Police Sergeant Barnes becomes head of security for Senator Charlie Roan, a Presidential candidate targeted for death on Purge night due to her vow to eliminate the Purge.
- 2016 | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
The Turtles get into another battle with their enemy the Shredder, who has acquired new allies: the mutant thugs Bebop and Rocksteady and the alien being Krang.
- 2015 | Project Almanac
Project Almanac
A group of teens discover secret plans of a time machine, and construct one. However, things start to get out of control.
- 2014 |
- 2014 | The Purge: Anarchy
The Purge: Anarchy
Three groups of people intertwine and are left stranded in the streets on Purge Night, trying to survive the chaos and violence that occurs.
- 2014 |
- 2013 |
director
Previous (4)
- 2022 |
- 2018 | The Island
The Island
A cataclysmic event causes a man, who dreams of winning the lottery, to become stranded on an island with his co-workers.
- 2017 | Transformers: The Last Knight
Transformers: The Last Knight
A deadly threat from Earth's history reappears and a hunt for a lost artifact takes place between Autobots and Decepticons, while Optimus Prime encounters his creator in space.
- 2016 |
Some Facts About Michael Bay
Action Director in Training: Bay claims that his interest in action moviemaking began when he used his mother’s 8-millimeter camera to film a toy train that he set on fire with firecrackers, which caused an emergency call to the fire department.
Ouch: Michael Bay is a four-time nominee and two-time winner of The Razzie Award for Worst Director.
Double-ouch: Bay is a two-time nominee for the Alliance of Women Film Journalists’ Sexist Pig Award.
Dog lover: When Michael Bay participated in the traditional hand and footprint ceremony in front of the TCL Chinese Theatre, he planted the paw of one of his three English Mastiffs, named Rebel, in the cement. He donated his Bar Mitzvah money to an animal shelter. Bay frequently casts dogs in his movies.
Teacher’s Pet: Despite being a target of film critics’ snubs, Michael Bay was a favorite student of respected film historian Jeanine Basinger at Wesleyan University.
Transformational: Michael Bay directed and produced five Transformers movies, from 2007 to 2017.
Not a fan: Before he directed Transformers, Bay was not a fan or follower of the Transformers product and comic franchise.
Boys and Their Toys: Michael Bay has owned or currently owns two Camaros, a Ferrari, an Escalade, a Range Rover, a Lamborghini, a Bentley, and a Gulfstream G550 plane.
