Michael Bay
Birthdate: February 17, 1965 (61 Years Old)
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 life
Known For
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
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Michael Bay Movies
Director
Previous (5)
- 2022 |
- 2018 |
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
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 |
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
During an attack on a U.S. compound in Libya, a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos.
- 2013 |
Pain & Gain
A trio of bodybuilders in Florida get caught up in an extortion ring and a kidnapping scheme that goes terribly wrong.
Producer
Previous (20)
- 2025 |
- 2024 |
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.
- 2024 |
Transformers One
The untold origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron, better known as sworn enemies, but who once were friends bonded like brothers who changed the fate of Cybertron forever.
- 2023 |
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
During the '90s, a new faction of Transformers - the Maximals - join the Autobots as allies in the battle for Earth.
- 2022 |
- 2021 |
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
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.
- 2018 |
- 2018 |
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 family struggles for survival in a world invaded by blind alien creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing.
- 2018 |
The Island
A cataclysmic event causes a man, who dreams of winning the lottery, to become stranded on an island with his co-workers.
- 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.
- 2016 |
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 |
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
During an attack on a U.S. compound in Libya, a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos.
- 2016 |
Ouija: Origin of Evil
In 1967 Los Angeles, a widowed mother's daughter tries to communicate with her late father through a Ouija board, but unleashes a demon instead.
- 2015 |
Project Almanac
A group of teens discovers secret plans for a time machine, and construct one. However, things start to get out of control.
- 2014 |
- 2014 |
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.
- 2013 |
Pain & Gain
A trio of bodybuilders in Florida get caught up in an extortion ring and a kidnapping scheme that goes terribly wrong.
- 2013 |
