Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and author. Moore's work frequently addresses various social, political, and economic topics. He first became publicly known for his award-winning debut documentary Roger & Me, a scathing look at the downfall of the automotive industry in 1980s Flint and Detroit.

Moore followed up and won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Bowling for Columbine, which examines the causes of the Columbine High School massacre and the overall gun culture in the United States. He directed and produced Fahrenheit 9/11, a critical look at the early presidency of George W. Bush and the War on Terror, which earned $119,194,771 to become the highest-grossing documentary at the American box office of all time. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, and was the subject of intense controversy. His documentary Sicko examines health care in the United States, and is one of the top ten highest-grossing documentaries as of 2020^[update]. In September 2008, he released his first free film on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, which documents his personal quest to encourage Americans to vote in presidential elections. He has written and starred in TV Nation, a satirical news-magazine television series, and The Awful Truth, a satirical show. In 2018, he released his latest film, Fahrenheit 11/9, a documentary about the 2016 United States presidential election and the presidency of Donald Trump. He was executive producer of Planet of the Humans (2019), a documentary about the environmental movement.

Moore's works criticize topics such as globalization, big business, assault weapon ownership, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism overall. In 2005, Time named Moore one of the world's 100 most influential people. Some critics have labeled Moore a "propagandist" and his films propaganda.

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) in Flint, Michigan, and grew up in the nearby suburb of Davison, where he was raised by parents Veronica (née Wall), and Francis Richard "Frank" Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker. At that time, Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle LaVerne was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint sit-down strike.

Moore was brought up in a traditional Catholic home, and has Irish, and smaller amounts of Scottish and English, ancestry. Some of his ancestors were Quakers.

Moore attended the parochial St. John's Elementary School, in John the Evangelist Parish, 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. 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 U.S., as the minimum age to hold public office had just been lowered to 18.

Moore attended the University of Michigan–Flint but dropped out during his second year.