Michael Benjamin Bay is an American filmmaker, known for directing big-budget action films in Hollywood. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1986, majoring in both English and Film. He then started working at Propaganda Films, where he directed various commercials and music videos, including the Coca-Cola commercial and the Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners Got Milk? advertisement campaign. In 1994, Bay was honoured by the Directors Guild of America with an award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials. His first national commercial for the Red Cross won a Clio Award in 1992.
Since his feature film directorial debut with the action-comedy Bad Boys (1995), Bay has helmed some of the biggest blockbusters in Hollywood in the past two decades, among which are the sci-fi disaster movie Armageddon (1998) and the sci-fi action film Transformers (2007). The latter of these marked the beginning of a multi-billion dollar franchise that spawned the sequels Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) and Transformers: The Last Knight (2017). All these films were directed and co-produced by Bay.
In 2014, he acted as a producer for the drama horror movie Ouija that stars Olivia Cooke and Daren Kagasoff in pivotal roles. The dark comedy crime film Pain & Gain (2013) and biographical war film 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) are among the filmmaker`s notable directorial credits in recent times outside the Transformers franchise. Notable recent production credits include the post-apocalyptic horror thriller A Quiet Place (2018) and the sci-fi action film Bumblebee (2018). His 2021 releases include the former`s sequel A Quiet Place - Part 2.