Background

Ethnicity: Much of Moore's ancestry is Irish, and he also has English and Scottish roots. Some of his family lines have been in the United States since the 1600s.

Michael Moore was born on April 23, 1954, in Flint, Michigan, United States to the family of an automotive assembly-line worker Francis Richard "Frank" Moore and a secretary Helen Veronica Wall. He grew up in Davison, Michigan.

Education

Michael Moore attended parochial St. John's Elementary School for primary school and later attended St. Paul's Seminary in Saginaw, Michigan, for a year. He then attended Davison High School, where he was active in both drama and debate, graduating in 1972. At the age of 18, he was elected to the Davison school board. At the time he was the youngest person elected to office in the United States, as the minimum age to hold public office had just been lowered to 18. Moore studied Journalism at the University of Michigan at Flint, but dropped out after a year.

Career

Following his graduation from high school, Michael Moore, as an 18-year-old member of the Flint school board, began his populist assault on what he viewed as the injustices of American capitalism. In 1976, after having attended but not graduated from the University of Michigan at Flint, Moore started a radical weekly newspaper, the Flint Voice (later Michigan Voice), which he edited for 10 years. He was later hired to edit the San Francisco-based left-wing magazine Mother Jones but was fired after a few months (he later accepted an out-of-court settlement for a wrongful-dismissal suit).

Returning to Flint, Moore filmed his first documentary, Roger & Me (1989), which chronicles the effects of unemployment in Flint due to the closing of two General Motors (GM) factories and the company’s longer-term policy of downsizing. At the centre of the film were Moore’s “in-your-face” efforts to gain an audience with GM’s chairman, Roger Smith. Mixing humour and poignancy with indignation, Roger & Me was a hit with critics and at the box office. Moore subsequently moved to New York City and established Dog Eat Dog Films. He also created an organization to finance social-action groups and other filmmakers.

After producing three television series and other limited-release films - including the comedy Canadian Bacon (1995), in which a United States President starts a cold war with Canada in order to boost his approval ratings - Moore achieved major success with Bowling for Columbine (2002). The film, which profiles gun violence in the United States, won the Academy Award for best documentary. In his next documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Moore criticized United States President George W. Bush’s handling of the September 11 attacks and the administration’s decision to start the Iraq War. Although highly controversial, it won the Golden Palm at the Cannes film festival and earned more than $222 million worldwide to become the highest-grossing documentary.

In 2007 Moore released Sicko, an examination of the health care industry in the United States. For his next documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), Moore took a critical look at the United States economy, including the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008 and the subsequent bailout of banks. Where to Invade Next (2015) unfavourably compared various aspects of daily life in other countries - such as educational practices and the balance between work and leisure - with those in the United States. Moore’s live stage performance about the 2016 presidential election - filmed prior to Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton - was the basis for Michael Moore in TrumpLand (2016). In 2017 Moore made his Broadway debut in the one-man show The Terms of My Surrender, which examined the Trump presidency. The following year he considered the 2016 presidential election and the unexpected rise of Trump in the documentary Fahrenheit 11/9. The movie especially takes to task the policies of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, under whose tenure Moore’s hometown was exposed to dangerous levels of lead.

Moore wrote a series of best-selling books, including Downsize This! (1996); Stupid White Men (2002), which assails the legitimacy, methods, and motives of President Bush’s administration; Dude, Where’s My Country? (2003), a call for “regime change” in the United States; and Mike’s Election Guide (2008), a guidebook to the 2008 United States presidential election. In 2011 he published Here Comes Trouble, a collection of autobiographical stories.

Achievements

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  Michael Francis Moore was named one of 100 Most Influential People by the version of TIME magazine in 2005. He was listed among 50 Smartest People in Hollywood by Entertainment Weekly in 2007 and included in The 100 Agents of Change by Rolling Stone magazine in 2009.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American

    (Americans today are working harder, working longer and ye...)

    1996
  • Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life

    (Michael Moore-Oscar-winning filmmaker, bestselling author...)

    2011
  • Adventures in a TV Nation

    (Based on an American television show, of the same name, i...)

    1998
  • The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader

    (The Cannes Film Festival jury voted unanimously to award ...)

    2004
  • Mike's Election Guide 2008

    (In his first book in five years, Michael Moore brings us ...)

    2008
  • Stupid White Men: And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!

    (In the winter of 2002, Stupid White Men took America - an...)

    2002
  • Dude, Where's My Country?

    (The author of the best-selling Stupid White Men notes Geo...)

    2003
  • Will They Ever Trust Us Again?

    (American soldiers serve willingly. They risk their lives ...)

    2004
  • Idiot Nation 2005

• movie

  • The Big One

    (Armed only with a camera and a sharp sense of humor, Moor...)

    1997
  • Bowling for Columbine

    (Winner of an Academy Award for Best Documentary, Michael ...)

    2002
  • TV Nation

    (TV Nation is a satirical news magazine television series ...)

    1994
  • TV Nation

    (TV Nation is a satirical news magazine television series ...)

    1994
  • Sicko

    (Following on the heels of his Palme d'Or Fahrenheit 9/11 ...)

    2007
  • Slacker Uprising

    (Slacker Uprising traces Michael Moore's 62-city tour of t...)

    2008
  • Where to Invade Next

    (Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore is back with...)

    2015
  • Capitalism: A Love Story

    (Michael Moore looks at the global financial crisis and th...)

    2009
  • Fahrenheit 9/11

    (In the most provocative film of the year, Michael Moore p...)

    2004
  • Roger & Me

    (Michael Moore's controversial but popular film is a highl...)

    1989
  • Fahrenheit 11/9

    (Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is a provocative and come...)

    2018
  • The Awful Truth

    (A satirical television show that was directed, written, a...)

    1999
  • Canadian Bacon

    (Beset by falling approval ratings & a sagging economy, a ...)

    1995
  • Michael Moore in TrumpLand

    (See the show Ohio Republicans tried to shut down. Oscar-w...)

    2016
  • Lucky Numbers

    (A television weatherman scams a local lottery.)

    2000

• music

  • Lord Shine!

    (A choral piece. Choir with Piano.)

    1971

Religion

Moore was raised Irish Catholic, went to Catholic schools growing up, and even entered the seminary with the intention of becoming a priest. Obviously, that didn’t pan out, but he says his religious upbringing helped lead him to his path of political activism. About how Catholic morals influenced his life and work he said: "I do believe that we are to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute you. I believe that there is power and strength in that."

Moore doesn’t follow every tenet of the Catholic church however. He is politically very liberal which doesn't always goes with strict Catholicism. He believes gay marriage should be legal, supports requiring Catholic insurers to provide birth control, and thinks pro-life supporters are “really, really weird.”

So even though Catholicism has greatly influenced his life and his worldview, he doesn’t think religion and politics are a great mix. In an article in the Huffington Post, Moore wrote a “Letter to God” that criticized politicians who invoke God’s name in support of their causes.

Politics

Widely known as a liberal activist, Moore has advocated left-wing positions on a wide array of hot-button political issues and often uses his celebrity to support these left-wing prerogatives.

In 2002, when Bowling for Columbine won the Academy Award for best documentary, Moore was widely criticized for using his award acceptance speech to lambast President George W. Bush as a “fictitious president.”

Moore used an appearance on Larry King Live to criticize both then-Senator Obama and then-Senator Clinton’s healthcare plans for failing to propose universal government-run healthcare, and he proclaimed that health care was a “human right.” On another occasion, Moore called for a single-payer national health insurance plan, under which the government would control and pay for from tax revenues all healthcare expenditure.

In 2004, Moore called for a substantial tax increase. He also said that he believes that the government should prevent companies from making fair profits and that corporations should have to pay “reparations” if they move operations overseas.

In 2015, Moore accused police of practicing racial discrimination against African Americans, called for the release of all people jailed on drug sentences, and said that police should be disarmed.

Since the 2016 election, Moore has consistently opposed President Trump. In January 2017, he joined the #DisruptJ20 movement which protested President Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C. Moore and Trump argued on Twitter about Moore’s anti-Trump Broadway show: President Trump tweeted, “While not at all presidential I must point out that the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close. Sad!”

In 2017, Moore launched a one-man Broadway show opposing President Trump; after one performance, Moore loaded the attendees (including liberal Hollywood actors Mark Ruffalo and Olivia Wilde) onto buses headed for a demonstration at Trump Tower.

Moore is a regular donor to the Democratic Party and Democratic political candidates. In the 2016 presidential election, he supported the self-described “democratic socialist” United States Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) in the Democratic Party primaries over Hillary Clinton. Moore claimed that he first endorsed Bernie Sanders for public office in 1990 and had been a supporter of his ever since.

Similarly, in 2008, he endorsed then-Senator Barack Obama and again blasted Hillary Clinton because she voted for the War in Iraq. In 2004, he supported anti-Iraq War retired General Wesley Clark over John Kerry in the Democratic primary and was noted to have “almost exclusively favored third-party candidates in the past.”

Since 2006, Moore has given $42,600 in large-dollar contributions exclusively to Democratic candidates and committees. His contribution history includes $5,000 to the Michigan Democratic State Party, over $6,000 to Gary Peters, $4,000 to Sheldon Whitehouse, and max-out contributions to Barack Obama for President, Joe Kennedy, Lon Johnson, Melissa Gilbert, and controversial Senator Robert Menendez.

Views

Michael Moore doesn't believe the threat of terrorism is real.

Although Moore never went to film school, he has stated that aspiring student filmmakers should attend CalArts or Columbia College Chicago as supposed to the University of Southern California or New York University. He noted this is because these two schools show a great amount of diversity in their students' backgrounds and therefore can create a greater range of films.

Quotations: "I don't compromise my values and I don't compromise my work. That's why I've been kicked from one network to the next: I won't give in."

"There is no terrorist threat!"

"The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy". They are the Revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow - and they will win."

"This had all my favorite activities rolled into one: fire, smoke and emitting a strange odor." - on being an altar boy, carrying the incense censer.

"I have never met a stupid black person. They are all pretty smart, you know."

"The man is, first of all, a malignant narcissist, and he's only about himself folks." - on Donald Trump.

"We've raised a generation of kids who don't hate people on the basis of race, or they don't hate somebody because they're in love with somebody of the same gender. Nearly 70% of the country is either female, people of color, or young adults between 18 and 35, or a combination of the three. The angry white guy is dying out, and the Census Bureau has already told us that by 2050, white people are going to be the minority, and I'm not sad to say I can't wait for that day to happen. I hope I live long enough to see it because it will be a better country." - on Donald Trump and the future of America.

"There was a book I read back in the Eighties called "Friendly Fascism" and the author said that the fascism of the 21st century would not come with concentration camps and swastikas, it'll come with a smiley face in a TV show."

"You can't leave Europe, they'd be no Europe without you. You saved Europe. You sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives to save Europe, not once but twice! To think that this great country would want to then say at this point in the 21st century, nah, enough of that, we're done." - on Brexit.

Personality

Moore has often been criticized for failing to adhere to the left-wing values that he advocates. Most notably, Moore blasts capitalism in almost all his works but with a reported net worth of approximately $50 million and nine houses, critics claim that he “swapped his working-class life in Flint for limousine liberal digs on Manhattan’s Upper West Side” and that he got rich off the capitalistic system that he purports to despise. Similarly, Moore has been accused of running his businesses as a “sweatshop” and mistreating his employees. Moore also claims to support labor unions, but on more than one occasion he has opposed unionization of his employees.

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Karl Marx

• Politicians

  Bernie Sanders

• Writers

  Arthur Conan Doyle, Dee Brown

• Sport & Clubs

  San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Tigers

Connections

Michael Moore married a film producer Kathleen Glynn on October 19, 1991. He requested a divorce on June 17, 2013. On July 22, 2014, the divorce was officially completed. Moore has a daughter, Natalie.

Father:

Francis Richard "Frank" Moore

Mother:

Helen Veronica Wall

ex-wife:

Kathleen Glynn

Daughter:

Natalie Moore

colleague:

Lisa Kudrow

colleague:

John Travolta

Acquaintance:

Noam Chomsky

Acquaintance:

Pope Francis

Michael Moore called Francis “the Catholic church’s Gorbachev.”

Acquaintance:

Quentin Tarantino

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998
• Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore The documentary film not by but about Michael Moore
  2007
• The Un-American This documentary explores the hypocrisy and misinformation in Michael Moore's Movies. The Producers tried desperately to get an interview with Michael Moore and finally get one.
  2018
• Michael Moore Hates America
  2004
• The World According to Michael Moore: An Unauthorized Portrait in His Own Words The World According To Michael Moore: A Portrait In His Own WordsIn all of his books Michael Moore has proven to be outspoken and outrageous. This compilation of quotes from interviews and a variety of other sources presents Moore's views on everything from politics to filmmaking and the state of American life and culture.
  2004