Michael Mann was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1943. As a youngster, he worked as a construction worker, short-order cook, and grocery clerk and eventually attended college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In school, he discovered his desire to make films as the artform allowed him to combine his love of history, technology, and philosophy. He pursued filmmaking all the way to England where he attended London Film School and would spend a considerable part of his early adulthood after graduating. While in Europe, he made his way doing documentaries by capturing the cultural and political revolution of the mid 1960s.
He returned to the United States in the 1970s and pursued a career as a screenwriter where he wrote on Starsky and Hutch. Later, he wrote for Police Story, a show which would further clarify his research-based approach to storytelling as it focused heavily on real stories derived from police officers. Leveraging his talent as a screenwriter, he gained his first official directing credit on an episode of Police Woman. His next credit was the movie for television The Jericho Mile (1979) which enjoyed significant critical acclaim. Then, in 1981 he directed his first feature film Thief.
Mann’s feature film credits include Thief (1981), Manhunter (1986), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Heat (1995), The Insider (1999), Ali (2001), Collateral (2004), Miami Vice (2006), Public Enemies (2009), and Blackhat (2015). Mann has also directed television episodes for Police Woman, Crime Story, and Luck. In addition, he directed the movies for television The Jericho Mile (1979) and L.A. Takedown (1981).
Mann has served on the Negotiating Committee from 2008-2020. In addition, he has also served on the National Board consecutively from 2001-2023 and has worked on the Theatrical Creative Rights Committee since its inception and the Western Director’s Council from 1996 to 2020_. Michael Mann also served on the committee to revamp the Los Angeles DGA theater into a state-of-the-art, custom-built motion picture exhibition space, which was unveiled in 2019.
Mann has been a member of the Directors Guild since 1977.