Hailing from Indiana farm country, Jamie Hyneman is a multifaceted man: wilderness survival expert, boat captain, diver, linguist, animal wrangler, machinist and cook, to name a few. His career has been as equally diverse: Jamie earned a degree in Russian languages and ran a sailing/diving charter business in the Caribbean for several years before he moved over to the visual-effects industry.
Once he had joined that field and had worked for several special-effects companies, Jamie found his way to Colossal Pictures' model shop, where he managed the production of models and special effects for hundreds of commercials and movies. Then, 16 years ago, Jamie took over the shop and created
M5 Industries Inc.
Jamie has worked on over 800 commercials for major automobile manufacturers, soft-drink companies, athletic shoe companies and numerous other products. And in the midst of all this activity, Jamie's company diversified into toy prototyping and research and development in a variety of other areas as well.
The holder of several patents and the winner of numerous industry awards, Jamie is also a long-standing Screen Actors Guild member.
Today, while
MythBusters occupies the majority of Jamie's professional activity, M5 is active with developing cutting-edge technologies for a variety of industries ranging from defense to green vehicle design. In Jamie's own words, "At this point, with over 130 episodes under our belts, I feel that we have evolved into different people than we were when we started
Mythbusters. You can't go through all the mayhem we have been into on the show without it changing you. I feel like we are just getting warmed up."
