Brad Bird Bio
Philip Bradley Bird, known professionally as Brad Bird, is an American filmmaker, animator, screenwriter, producer, and voice actor. Born on September 24, 1957, in Kalispell, Montana, he has built a reputation as one of the most respected directors in modern animation, with a career that spans decades and includes both animated classics and live-action blockbusters. He is widely recognized for his meticulous craftsmanship, his advocacy for animation as a serious art form, and his insistence on creative freedom in the projects he leads.
Bird first gained widespread attention as a creative consultant on The Simpsons and as the director of the cult-favorite animated film The Iron Giant. He later achieved major success at Pixar with The Incredibles and Ratatouille, both of which earned him Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature. He has also directed the live-action films Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland, and returned to Pixar to helm Incredibles 2. Across his body of work, Bird is known for blending emotional storytelling with technical precision.
Early Life and Background
Philip Bradley Bird was born on September 24, 1957, in Kalispell, Montana, the youngest of four children. His parents were Marjorie A. Cross and Philip Cullen Bird. His father worked in the propane business, and his family later settled in Corvallis, Oregon, where Bird attended Corvallis High School and graduated in 1975. The move to Oregon shaped much of his adolescence, and he has often described his parents as supportive of his creative interests from an early age.
Bird developed a deep fascination with animation during childhood. He began drawing at age three, creating his first attempts at sequential storytelling, and his interest in the medium deepened after watching The Jungle Book in 1967. A family friend who had taken animation classes explained how the craft worked, and Bird’s father helped him set up a used animation camera that could shoot one frame at a time. By age 11, he had begun work on his first short subject, and by 14, he had completed a fifteen-minute adaptation of The Tortoise and the Hare.
Encouraged by his parents to “start at the top and work your way down,” Bird sent his early film to Walt Disney Productions. The studio responded with an open invitation, and during a tour of the Burbank campus, he met the legendary Nine Old Men, the animators behind Disney’s earliest classics. The experience led to an informal apprenticeship that had never been offered to anyone before. After high school, Bird was awarded a Disney scholarship to attend the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, where his classmates included future animation leaders John Lasseter, Tim Burton, and Henry Selick.
Path to Directing
Within two years of joining the program, Bird accepted a job as an animator at Walt Disney Productions. He contributed to The Small One and The Fox and the Hound, but found himself at odds with studio leadership, and was eventually fired by animation administrator Edward Hansen. After leaving Disney, Bird relocated to the Bay Area and attempted to adapt Will Eisner’s comic book The Spirit to feature animation, though no studio would fund the project. He also briefly worked on a computer-animated concept at Lucasfilm with Edwin Catmull, foreshadowing his later work in computer animation.
Bird’s fortunes changed when a piece of his test reel, Family Dog, caught the attention of director Steven Spielberg. The concept was developed into a segment of the anthology series Amazing Stories, and Bird joined Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment in the mid-1980s. He co-wrote the screenplay for Batteries Not Included and worked on the 3-D short film Captain EO, both of which expanded his profile in Hollywood. During this period, he also married Elizabeth Canney, an editor on Batteries Not Included.
In 1989, Bird was invited to join the production of The Simpsons as executive consultant, a role that allowed him to shape the show’s cinematic visual language for its first eight seasons. He directed standout episodes such as “Krusty Gets Busted” and designed the character Sideshow Bob. His television work sharpened his directing instincts and laid the groundwork for his eventual move into feature animation.
Brad Bird Career
Early Career (1977–1999)
Bird’s earliest professional credits came at Walt Disney Productions, where he worked as an animator on The Small One and The Fox and the Hound. After leaving Disney, he built a portfolio of original concepts and developed the animated segment Family Dog, which led to a collaboration with Steven Spielberg. His work on Amazing Stories and the theatrical film Batteries Not Included established him as a capable screenwriter with a distinct visual style.
Bird’s first major directorial breakthrough came with The Iron Giant in 1999, an adaptation of Ted Hughes’ novel The Iron Man. The film, set during the Cold War, follows a young boy who befriends a giant alien robot. Although it received widespread critical praise, the film underperformed at the box office, grossing only $31.3 million against a $50 million budget. Despite its commercial failure, The Iron Giant developed a devoted following on home video and remains a touchstone of animated cinema.
Breakthrough (2000–2018)
Bird joined Pixar in 2000 under a multi-film contract, becoming the first outside director the studio had ever signed. His first project for the studio was The Incredibles (2004), a superhero story following a family of former crimefighters forced into suburban life. The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing $631.4 million worldwide and winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It also earned Bird a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and became the first animated film to win the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
Bird followed this success with Ratatouille (2007), the story of a rat who dreams of becoming a chef in Paris. Taking over a project originally developed by Jan Pinkava, Bird rewrote the script and guided the film to another major hit. Ratatouille grossed $623.7 million worldwide, won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature, and earned Bird his second Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, along with another Best Original Screenplay nomination.
In 2011, Bird transitioned to live-action filmmaking with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, starring Tom Cruise. The film became the highest-grossing entry in the franchise at that point, earning $694 million worldwide. He returned to science fiction with Tomorrowland (2015), a collaboration with Damon Lindelof and star George Clooney, though the film struggled at the box office. Bird then returned to Pixar to direct Incredibles 2 (2018), which shattered opening weekend records for an animated film with $182.7 million and went on to gross over $1.2 billion worldwide.
Notable Works and Milestones
Bird’s most celebrated works include The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and Incredibles 2. He is among a rare group of directors to have earned Academy Awards in animation and successfully crossed over into live-action filmmaking. His films are recognized for their emotional depth, dynamic action, and willingness to treat audiences with maturity and intelligence.
Brad Bird Award Nominations
Across his career, Brad Bird has earned multiple prestigious nominations, including two Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for The Incredibles and Ratatouille, as well as a nomination for Best Animated Feature for Incredibles 2. His work has also been recognized with nominations from the Golden Globes, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Annie Awards, where he is one of the most honored figures in the history of the ceremony.
Brad Bird Awards Won
Brad Bird has won two Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature, for The Incredibles in 2005 and Ratatouille in 2008. He has also won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature for Ratatouille, and holds the record for the most Annie Award wins in animation, with eight wins. In 2011, he received the Winsor McCay Award for lifetime contribution to animation.
Brad Bird Family
Philip Bradley Bird was born to Marjorie A. Cross and Philip Cullen Bird, and grew up as the youngest of four children. His family relocated from Montana to Corvallis, Oregon, during his youth, where he completed high school. Bird has credited his parents with nurturing his early interest in animation, including arranging studio tours and supporting his first filmmaking experiments.
Personal Life
Brad Bird married Elizabeth Canney in 1988, after they met while working together on Batteries Not Included. The couple has three sons: Nicholas, Michael, and Jack. Several of his sons have provided voice work in Pixar films, including Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Bird has maintained homes in Tiburon, California, and Los Feliz, California, throughout his adult life.