Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh OBEis an English writer and director of film and theatre. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Artbefore honing his directing skills at East 15 Acting School and further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid-1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s his career moved between theatre work and making films for BBC Television, many of which were characterised by...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth20 February 1943
artist way actors
The way an actor is trained doesn't ultimately have much bearing on my work. I'm interested in the actor as artist.
jobs trends want
I take no notice of the trends. It has never concerned me at all. My job is to deal with what I want to deal with and reach an audience by doing so.
hollywood world film
Films are made all over the world all the time and only a thin slice of that product is Hollywood.
people giving film
People have been very resistant to giving me more than the standard amount of money. So I keep making films on a similar scale. Which is fine, but also frustrating.
artist shooting
You can't make a movie about the artist without shooting outdoors.
class way scripts
I wonder if I would have been capable of producing anything if I worked in a more conventional way with a prewritten script, because I'm of the procrastinator class.
lucky our-relationship wonderful-experience
My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky; either your relationship works or it doesn't.
world cinema british
I am very happy to be part of European and world cinema as a British filmmaker.
play film
I've walked out of films. But for every film I've ever walked out of, I've probably walked out of 500 plays.
want rubbish life-is
It's an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it, and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That's just rubbish, basically.
funny morning night
Resolve was never stronger than in the morning, after the night, when it was never weaker
acting actors way
The notion that acting is simply about intuitively responding to situations the way you feel couldn't be farther away from how I ask actors to work.
thinking important goes-on
I think it's important that nobody forgets that although Hollywood commercially dominates the world cinema, in fact what comes out of the filmmaking here is only a tiny slice out of the massive amount of operation that goes on around the world.
integrity worry long
I've long since stopped worrying about how I'm portrayed in the press because ultimately it's not that important. Everyone who knows me knows I do what I do with the greatest integrity.