Michael Bay

17 Feb, 1965 |

Producer/Director

Biography

Michael Benjamin Bay born  on February 17, 1965. He  is an American film director and producer. He is best known for directing high-budget action films characterized by fast edits, polished visuals and substantial usage of practical special effects. His films, which include The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and the Bad Boys and Transformers series, have grossed over three billion dollars world-wide. He is co-founder of commercial production house The Institute , a.k.a. The Institute for the Development of Enhanced Perceptual Awareness. He is co-chair and part-owner of the special effects house Digital Domain. He co-owns Platinum Dunes, a production house which has remade horror movies including Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street.      Early career: Michael Bay began working at Propaganda Films, directing commercials and music videos, two weeks after finishing his post-graduate degree. His 90-second World War II-inspired Coca-Cola ad was picked up by Capitol Records. His first national commercial for the Red Cross won a Clio Award in 1992. He created the Got Milk? advertisement campaign for the California Milk Processors Board in 1993. Personal life: Michael Bay was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He was raised by his adoptive parents Harriet, a bookstore owner/child psychiatrist, and Jim, a CPA. His cousin, Susan Bay, is the wife of Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy. He attended the exclusive Crossroads School, in Santa Monica, California. Bay often traces his interest in action films back to an incident during his childhood. As a boy, he attached some firecrackers to a toy train and filmed the ensuing fiery disaster with his mother's 8mm camera. The firemen were called and he was grounded. He got his start in the film industry interning with George Lucas when he was fifteen, filing the storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark, which he thought was going to be terrible. But his opinion changed after seeing it in the theater and he was so impressed by the experience that he decided to become a film director. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1986, majoring in both English and Film. He was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and a favorite student of film historian Jeanine Basinger. For his graduate work, he attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena where he also studied film. He lives in Los Angeles and Miami with his two bullmastiffs, Bonecrusher and Grace, named for characters in Transformers and Armageddon, respectively. He loves animals. As a boy he donated his Bar Mitzvah money to an animal shelter and often includes his bullmastiff dogs in his films. Mason the dog's last appearance in a film was as Miles' dog in Transformers. He died during production of that film in March 2007. On September 1, 2010, Bay offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the capture and prosecution of a young woman who appeared in a video on YouTube casually throwing puppies into a river to drown them as well as her accomplice who videotaped the act. He retracted the offer when an individual came forth on the site to confess to the crime.