Sean Bobbitt was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on November 29, 1958.

In 2008, Bobbitt worked with artist-turned-director Steve McQueen on British film Hunger, a hard-hitting film about the Northern Irish hunger striker, Bobby Sands. With this film Bobbitt, McQueen, Editor Joe Walker and actor Michael Fassbender formed a collaborative award-winning team that have gone on to make a further two films, Shame and 12 Years a Slave. Bobbitt won a BIFA in 2008 for his work on Hunger. He was again nominated in 2011 for Shame, starring Academy Award nominee Carey Mulligan alongside Fassbender. In 2012, Bobbitt won the Carlo Di Palma European Cinematographer of the Year Award at the European Film Awards for his work on Shame. Also in 2012, Bobbitt completed filming on The Place Beyond the Pines, which stars Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes and Ray Liotta, a film starring Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Arterton and Jonny Lee Miller called Byzantium, and he concluded five years of working on Michael Winterbottom drama-film Everyday. In early 2013, he completed work on Oldboy, the Spike Lee-directed American remake of the 2003 South Korean film of the same name. The end of 2013 saw the release of 12 Years a Slave, which ultimately won the coveted Best Picture Award at the 2014 Oscars. In 2014 he went on to work on Kill the Messenger and Barry Levinson's Rock the Kasbah, starring Bill Murray.