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
generosity choices luck
Life is about luck and it's about circumstances and socioeconomic conditions and all the rest of it, but you know, you can also make choices. It's about spirit and generosity and all the other things, too.
hollywood world film
Films are made all over the world all the time and only a thin slice of that product is Hollywood.
cinema feels ifs
I feel very much ideologically, politically if you like, and emotionally part of the European cinema.
consciousness awareness constant
There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things.
perspective pressure good-things
The good thing from my perspective is that nobody puts any pressure on me to say what it's going to be. The backers accept that they don't know what they are going to get.
obsession creeps millions
It creeps up on you and becomes an obsession. It comes out of watching a million movies.
independent independent-filmmaking forgotten
Independent filmmaking has always been there and it's not to be forgotten.
insecurity film problem
The problem with the British film industry is the nervousness and insecurity about - and genuflection toward - Los Angeles.
hollywood london saws
I grew up looking at... going to the movies a lot, as much as they'd let you. I grew up in Manchester in the north of England in the '40s and '50s. I saw a lot of movies. They were all Hollywood and British movies. I didn't see a film that wasn't in English until I was 17 when I went to London to be a student.
insecure people actors
In the first place, I'm pretty thorough about whom I choose. I instinctively look for the kind of actor who is going to be trusting. There are all kinds of insecure people out there called actors.
insecure acting actors
Some deeply untrusting actors - the kind that need to know exactly what's what and are completely insecure - might be quite good within the parameters of a certain sort of acting.
hollywood popular successful
There is a popular misconception that film-makers have to look to Hollywood to be commercially successful but this is how we have been conditioned.