Michael Bay

Michael Bay is an American film director and producer born in Los Angeles, California on February 17th, 1964. He is best known for high intensity action films, which became popular during the mid-late 1990s. Michael was raised in Los Angeles by his adoptive parents James and Harriet. Bay attended Wesleyan University, graduating in 1986. He did undergraduate work at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. His early professional work was electrical and camera operation in the music video industry.

Career
Michael Bay's directorial career began with a string of commercially successful action films. Beginning in 1995, he directed Bad Boys starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. He followed this up with The Rock in 1996 starring Nicholas Cage, Sean Connery and Aliens and Terminator star Michael Biehn. In 1998, he directed the summer megahit Armageddon starring Bruce Willis. Hoping to capture some of the lightning generated by James Cameron's Titanic, Bay directed his own historical feature, Pearl Harbor in 2001. In 2003, he reunited Will Smith and Martin Lawrence for the sequel to Bad Boys, appropriately titled Bad Boys II.

Michael Bay's first true sci-fi venture was 2005's The Island. The film starred Star Wars icon Ewen McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. The film was a pastiche of several classic sci-fi elements such as Fahrenheit 451, THX: 1138 and Logan's Run.

In 2007, Michael Bay turned his love for fast cars and explosive action to its next logical step: He helmed the first of three films in the live-action reimagining of Hasbro's Transformers franchise. Despite mixed reviews, Michael Bay's Transformers proved commerically successful, grossing $319,071,806 in the United States and $706,471,251 worldwide. The movie spawned a sequel in 2009 entitled Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. A third and final film in the series, Transformers: Dark of the Moon was released over July 4th weekend in 2011. Bay also produced Armageddon, The Island and all three Transformers films, for which he was credited as executive producer.

Notes & Trivia

 * Founder of the Platinum Dunes production company.


 * Former intern for George Lucas. At age fifteen, he worked filing storyboards for the Lucas/Spielberg film Raiders of the Lost Ark.


 * Michael Bay's cousin, Susan Bay, is the wife of Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy.


 * Through Platinum Dunes, Michael Bay has also produced a number horror remake films. Most of them have been received poorly by both critics and fans, though all have managed to turn a modest profit. This includes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, The Hitcher, The Unborn and Friday the 13th.

Trademarks
Like many directors of his generation, Michael Bay has several trademarks that appear throughout his films.
 * Slow-motion sweeping pans
 * Ground-level pans
 * Fast edits
 * "This is as real as it gets" (a character almost always speaks some variation of this line in nearly all of his films).