Who

The director of such films as Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore is the generously-proportioned, baseball-capped documentarian who's a thorn in the side of big business, the Bush White House, and liberals who don't agree with him. Love him or hate him, you probably know his name, which is all he's really after in the end.

Backstory

The son of an assembly-line worker at GM, Moore dropped out of the University of Michigan at Flint to start up an alternative weekly paper, The Flint Voice, in his economically depressed Michigan hometown. In 1986, he closed down the paper to join the San Francisco-based liberal magazine Mother Jones as editor. He was soon sacked, but after picking up $58,000 in a wrongful termination suit, Moore had the money he needed to fund his first film, 1989's Roger & Me, a documentary about the flailing auto industry and Roger B. Smith, the elusive CEO of General Motors. After a few non-successes in the '90s—including a short-lived TV program called TV Nation and the 1995 John Candy vehicle Canadian Bacon about a fictional U.S. war on Canada—Moore rebounded in a big way with his 2002 takedown of the National Rifle Association, Bowling For Columbine, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary. Moore followed up with 2004's Bush-bashing Fahrenheit 9/11, which remains the highest-grossing doc of all-time, and in 2007 he released his investigation into national healthcare, Sicko.

Of note

Even before it was released, Fahrenheit 9/11 had created the sort of publicity-generating controversy that Moore so shamelessly craves: Conservative groups agitated to stop its release, and political pressure led Disney's Michael Eisner to try and block its distribution through the Disney-owned studio Miramax. The film debuted as scheduled, of course—Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax transferred the rights to a third-party and outsourced the distribution so Disney could profit without being officially attached to the political hot potato. Fahrenheit 9/11 became one of the most talked-about pictures of the year, winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and raking in more than $200 million around the world.

In 2007, Moore followed up with the Sicko, an excoriation of the healthcare industry. Although it didn't generate quite the same hype as Fahrenheit, Moore ensured plenty of pre-release drama, and its estimated $25 million take at the box office was respectable, even if it paled in comparison to the nine-figure sum raked in by Fahrenheit 9/11. Ultimately the film effected little actual change—it didn't stimulate much of a healthcare reform movement or generate liberal buzz on the level of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth—but it inflated Moore's already bloated public profile. After briefly considering a Fahrenheit sequel called Fahrenheit 9/11 ½, in late 2007 Moore unveiled his most recent film, Captain Mike Across America. Possibly the weakest film he's made in a decade, Captain featured Moore visiting college campuses (and receiving more than a few standing ovations) in the run-up to the 2004 elections. A " self-congratulatory mess," declared one critic.

In print

Moore has published a slew of books as part of his efforts to build up his everyman brand. His first literary exercise was 1996's Downsize This! In the wake of his newfound post-Bowling for Columbine popularity, he published 2003's Dude Where's My Country, 2004's Stupid White Men, and 2005's Will They Ever Trust Us Again?

Personal

Moore is married to producer Kathleen Glynn and has a stepdaughter, Natalie. The Moores live the Bromley apartment building on Broadway and 83rd Street.

No joke

Moore's an Eagle Scout, the highest designation in the Boy Scouts of America.