Born and reared in Dallas, Max grew up in Texas with his advertising executive father and photographer mother Laura. The troublemaker was despatched to the tough New Mexico Military Institute to learn some discipline. It was there he discovered his passion for writing - editing the college magazine - and then went to California's UCLA to study English. Along with his degree, Wilson's budding partnership with a like-minded creative classmate, aspiring filmmaker Wes Anderson resulted their first film together, a short about a bookstore heist called Bottle Rocket played at the Sundance Film Festival in 1993, attracting the attention of producer Polly Platt and writer/director James L. Brooks. With their support, short into a feature, Bottle Rocket (1996). Though it made little impression at the box office, it succeeded to earn ardent fans among cineastes. As an actor, Wilson had minor roles in The Cable Guy in 1996 and the following year in the B-movie Anaconda. He reteamed with Anderson on the sublime Rushmore, starring Bill Murray, which he co-wrote and executive produced.

Wilson worked steadily for the rest of the 1990s. Wilson managed to bring a reliably laid-back, humorous spark to the bombastic proceedings in Anaconda (1997), Armageddon (1998), and The Haunting (1999). On a more artistically successful front, Wilson's next script with Anderson resulted in the lauded coming-of-age film Rushmore (1998). With its singular cast of characters, distinctive combination of deadpan humor and true emotion, and superb performances by Jason Schwartzmanas teen prodigy Max Fischer and Bill Murray as depressed millionaire Blume, Rushmore earned prizes from the critics and proved that Bottle Rocket was no fluke. As far as acting, Wilson's ability to suggest complexity beneath a breezy surface earned positive notice for his unsettling performance as a laconic, self-styled Good Samaritan serial killer in indie thriller The Minus Man (1999). Switching genres, he starred as Roy O'Bannen in the martial arts spoof Shanghai Noon with Jackie Chan. He starred with comic mate Ben Stiller in Meet The Parents and Zoolander, as well as The Royal Tenenbaums (for which he was Oscar-nominated as a co-writer), also starring brother Luke. Next up was the slick action caper Behind Enemy Lines with Gene Hackman, the buddy movie I Spy with Eddie Murphyand Shanghai Noon sequel Shanghai Knights He played Hutch in the modern remake of Seventies TV series Starsky & Hutch for an £8m paycheque to Stiller's Starsky and also stars in crime thriller The Big Bounce.