Michael Trent Reznor (born 1965) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and composer. He was born in Pennsylvania. After his parents divorced, he went to live with his maternal grandparents. While in high school he joined a band. He is the lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and principal songwriter of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, which he founded in 1988 and of which he was the sole official member until 2016.He has contributed to the albums of artists such as Marilyn Manson, whom he mentored, and rapper Saul Williams. Alongside his wife Mariqueen Maandig and long-time Nine Inch Nails collaborators Atticus Ross and Rob Sheridan, he formed the post-industrial group How to Destroy Angels in 2009.Reznor and Ross scored David Fincher's films The Social Network (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Gone Girl (2014), and Mank (2020). They won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Social Network and the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The duo also scored the films Patriots Day (2016), mid90s, Bird Box (both 2018), Waves (2019) and Soul (2020), the documentaries Before the Flood (2016) and The Vietnam War (2017), and the TV series Watchmen (2019), winning a Primetime Emmy Award for the lattermost. In 1997, Reznor appeared on Time's list of the year's most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as "the most vital artist in music".