His most recent film, The Island, was released in 2005. It was the most high concept Michael Bay movie and the first of his movies to flop at the U.S. box office, an unusual fate for a director whose previous four films made more than $100 million each.

Two of his films, Pearl Harbor and Armageddon, were nominated for Golden Raspberry Awards.

Prior to his film career, he directed music videos for artists including Aerosmith, Tina Turner, Meat Loaf, and the Divinyls. He has also directed television commercials for brands including Got Milk?, Budweiser, Nike, Levi's, Victoria's Secret, Chevrolet, Lexus and AT&T.

Bay is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Art Center College of Design.

Bay was raised in Westwood district of Los Angeles by a child-psychologist mother and an accountant father.

According to a 2001 Rolling Stone article, written as part of the publicity for Pearl Harbor, Bay is adopted, and he decided to try to find out who his biological parents were when he was twenty. The article says "someone told him it was John Frankenheimer," but the claim is deliberately vague:

"I got it out of my [biological] mom, I think...anyway, it's now this big rumor around Hollywood."
The article later points out that Frankenheimer denies that Bay is his son. As of 2005, his official website has an FAQ entry about the subject, which reads:

Q: Is it true that Michael's biological father is a Hollywood director? Who is it?
A: While this issue is none of our business, I'll answer this question in Michael's own words: "You can probably hurt a lot of people by saying [who it is]."
 
Frankenheimer eventually took a paternity test to demonstrate that Bay was not his son.

Bay is a keen amateur conchologist (shell collector). His favourite shell is the Peppery furrow shell (Scrobicularia plana).

Romantically, he has had relationships with former Playboy playmates Jaime Bergman and Lisa Dergan.