Michael Bay's Creepiest Moments Are Worse Than We Thought
Director Michael Bay is great at making things explode and at making bank at the box office. Something he's not so great at? Public relations, especially when women are involved. Here are his shadiest moments yet.
He ogled an underage Megan Fox
Too young to vote, drink, smoke, drive, or get a tattoo? That's no problem for Michael Bay! Megan Fox told Jimmy Kimmel in 2009, "The first time I ever met him, I had just turned 15 and I was an extra on Bad Boys II (2003). They were shooting this club scene, and they brought me in, and I was wearing a stars and stripes bikini and a red cowboy hat and six-inch heels. [Bay] approved it, and they said, 'You know, Michael, she's 15, so you can't sit her at the bar and she can't have a drink in her hand.' So his solution to that problem was to then have me dancing underneath a waterfall getting soaking wet...I was in 10th grade...that's sort of a microcosm of how Bay's mind works."
He put Megan Fox through the most objectifying audition ever
When Fox was auditioning for Transformers (2007), she didn't get to do test shoots or read lines like everyone else. Instead, the Guardian (via Page Six) reports that Bay filmed Fox at his home washing his Ferrari as an audition—seriously. Writer Jason Solomons said, "She said she didn't know what had happened to that footage. When I put it to Bay himself, he looked suitably abashed—'Er, I don't know where it is either.'"
He treated Fox badly on set
You know it's bad when even Shia LaBeouf side-eyes your behavior. The star of the Transformers franchise told The Los Angeles Times that Fox wasn't comfortable with Bay's onset behavior. "Megan developed this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment [stuff] that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael, who some people think is a very lascivious filmmaker, the way he films women," LaBeouf said. "Mike films women in a way that appeals to a 16-year-old sexuality...And I think [Fox] never got comfortable with it...When Mike would ask her to do specific things, there was no time for fluffy talk....And the one thing Mike lacks is tact. There's no time for [LaBeouf assumes a gentle voice] 'I would like you to just arch your back 70 degrees.'"
Fox fired her when she called him out
In 2009, Fox told Wonderland magazine, "[Bay's] like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he's a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he's not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he's so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it's endearing to watch him." While it's certainly not the most flattering portrayal of the director, it's certainly not much worse than anything film critics have said about him. Even so, that interview got Fox fired from Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon (2011).
Bay insisted to GQ that he didn't want to fire her and that Steven Spielberg made him do it. He also issued the following apology to his terminated leading lady: "I'm sorry, Megan. I'm sorry I made you work twelve hours. I'm sorry that I'm making you show up on time. Movies are not always warm and fuzzy."
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley was in physical pain for him
Fox's replacement for Transformers: Dark Side Of The Moon (2011), Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, revealed that her first meeting with Bay was a painful one—literally. She told GQ, "I first met Michael back in 2009; it was on the set of the Christmas commercial for Victoria's Secret. I remember the first thing Michael said to me—before he even introduced himself or asked me my name—was 'Can you walk?'...And then he proceeded to tell them to get me in the car, and then I was driven—I mean, honestly, I want to say it was about half a mile out in the desert...And the car dumped me in the middle of the desert. All I was wearing was a bra and underwear and a big, billowing, black, floor-length cape and high heels. And he says, 'OK, when we shout action, you're going to walk!' and I assumed I would be doing this in several stages. They yelled action, and the car sped off back to set...So I walked all the way back to where the camera was standing, which took me—I would say a good 10, 12 minutes, and it was a proper runway stomp—on salt flats; it was like 100 degrees, felt like fire. I remember walking back and being not impressed by the whole thing. I was pretty pissed off afterwards; I just looked at Michael, and he goes, 'I guess you can walk, then.'"
He body-shamed Kate Beckinsale
Actress Kate Beckinsale revealed on The Graham Norton Show that when she was cast in Pearl Harbor (2001), Bay was taken aback by her appearance—and not in the way that most of us are. "I think [Bay] was baffled by me because my boobs weren't bigger than my head and I wasn't blond," she said. "I'd just had my daughter and had lost weight...but I was told that if I got the part, I'd have to work out. And I just didn't understand why a 1940s nurse would do that."
When asked about Beckinsale, Bay told Movieline, "I didn't want someone who was too beautiful. Women feel disturbed when they see someone's too pretty."
He issued a tone-deaf apology to Beckinsale
When the world issued a collective "WTF?" over Bay's numerous assessments of Beckinsale, he issued an apology on his website in which he accidentally proved that he completely missed the point of why what he'd said to her was so awful. "I guess I was the 'bad guy' 16 years ago for suggesting a trainer because she just had her new beautiful baby girl—and she was about to enter into an intensive action movie," he said. "Note to reporters: 95 percent of leads in movies have trainers and drink green juice!"