Michael Benjamin Bay (born February 17, 1965) is an American film director and producer. Bay has achieved financial success with such movies as Transformers, Armageddon, The Rock, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys, and Bad Boys II. Bay is also one of the members of the LA music video production company Propaganda Films.
A graduate of Wesleyan University, Michael Bay spent his 20s working on advertisements and music videos. His first projects after film school were in the music video business. He created music videos for Tina Turner, Meat Loaf, Lionel Richie (I), Wilson Phillips, Donny Osmond and 'The DiVinyls'. His work won him recognition and a number of MTV award nominations. He also filmed advertisements for Nike, Reebok, Coca-Cola, Budweiser and Miller Lite. He won the Grand Prix Clio for Commercial of the Year for his "Got Milk/Aaron Burr" commercial. At Cannes, he has won the Gold Lion for The Best Beer campaign for Miller Lite, as well as the Silver for "Got Milk". In 1995 Bay was honored by the Directors Guild of America as Commercial Director of the Year. That same year he also directed his first feature film, Bad Boys (1995), starring Will Smith (I) and Martin Lawrence (I), which grossed more than $160 million worldwide. His follow-up film, Rock, The (1996), starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage, was also hugely successful, making Bay the director du jour.
