Michael Bay On Complaining Actors: 'Be Happy You Even Have A Job' [UPDATE]

Michael Bay has shot back at "Transformers" voice actor Hugo Weaving without even mentioning Weaving's name.

"Do you ever get sick of actors that make $15 million a picture, or even $200,000 for voiceover work that took a brisk one hour and 43 minutes to complete, and then complain about their jobs?" Bay wrote. "With all the problems facing our world today, do these grumbling thespians really think people reading the news actually care about trivial complaints that their job wasn’t 'artistic enough' or 'fulfilling enough'?"

UPDATE, 10/18: The post on Bay's website has been pulled down, but you can read the statement in full by clicking here.

The original story continues below.

Weaving, who voiced Megatron in Bay's three "Transformers" films, called the work "meaningless," while also saying he never even met Bay face to face. In his retort, Bay cites THR as publishing Weaving's comments (again, without mentioning Weaving by name), but the original interview was published by Collider. (HuffPost Entertainment picked up Weaving's remarks as well.)

"That’s a weird job for me because it honestly was a two-hour voice job, initially," Weaving said. "It was one of the only things I’ve ever done where I had no knowledge of it, I didn’t care about it, I didn’t think about it. They wanted me to do it. In one way, I regret that bit. I don’t regret doing it, but I very rarely do something if it’s meaningless. It was meaningless to me, honestly. I don’t mean that in any nasty way. I did it. It was a two-hour voice job, while I was doing other things."

Weaving isn't the first "Transformers" star to ding the films. Megan Fox famously compared Bay to "Hitler," while also claiming that the films were dangerous. "Shia [Labeouf] and I almost die when we make a 'Transformers' movie. He has you do some really insane things that insurance would never let you do."

LaBeouf, who has often spoken out against projects he didn't like -- "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" among them -- also knocked the franchise.

"We got lost [on the second movie]. We tried to get bigger. It's what happens to sequels. It's like, how do you top the first one? You've got to go bigger," LaBeouf said. "Mike [Bay] went so big that it became too big, and I think you lost the anchor of the movie. ... You lost a bit of the relationships. Unless you have those relationships, then the movie doesn't matter. Then it's just a bunch of robots fighting each other."

For Bay, that kind of talk is exhausting.

"What happened to people who had integrity, who did a job, got paid for their hard work, and just smiled afterward? Be happy you even have a job -– let alone a job that pays you more than 98% of the people in America," he wrote.

For more from Bay, including his offer to any actor not pleased with their "unhappy job money," head over to MichaelBay.com.

[via MichaelBay.com]

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