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Bird was born in Montana and grew up in Oregon. He developed an interest in the art of animation early on, and completed his first short subject by age 14. Bird sent the film to Walt Disney Productions, leading to an apprenticeship from the studio's Nine Old Men. He attended the California Institute of the Arts in the late 1970s, and worked for Disney shortly thereafter.

In the 1980s, Bird worked in film development with various studios. He co-wrote Batteries Not Included (1987), and developed two episodes of Amazing Stories for Steven Spielberg, including its spin-off (based on a segment written by Bird for the show), the widely panned animated sitcom Family Dog. Afterwards, Bird joined the animated sitcom The Simpsons as creative consultant for eight seasons. He directed the animated film The Iron Giant (1999); though acclaimed, it was a box-office bomb.

Bird moved to Pixar where he wrote and directed two successful animated films, The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007). They earned Bird two Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature wins and Best Original Screenplay nominations. He transitioned to live-action filmmaking with similarly successful Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), he then directed Disney's Tomorrowland (2015). He returned to Pixar to develop Incredibles 2 (2018), which became the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time during its theatrical run, and earned him another nomination for the Academy Award. In 2026, he is set to partner with Skydance Animation to direct Ray Gunn, a sci-fi noir film he’s wanted to make for over thirty years.

Bird has a reputation for supervising his projects to a high degree of detail. He advocates for creative freedom and the possibilities of animation, and has criticized its stereotype as children's entertainment, or classification as a genre, rather than an art.