Quotes by Mike Leigh

About Mike Leigh:

Mike Leigh is an English writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) 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 a gritty "kitchen sink realism" style. His well-known films include the comedy-dramas Life is Sweet (1990) and Career Girls (1997), the Gilbert and Sullivan biographical film Topsy-Turvy (1999), and the bleak working-class drama All or Nothing (2002). His most notable works are the black comedy-drama Naked (1993), for which he won the Best Director Award at Cannes, the Oscar-nominated, BAFTA and Palme d'Or-winning drama Secrets & Lies (1996) and the Golden Lion winning working-class drama Vera Drake (2004). Some of his notable stage plays include Smelling A Rat, It's A Great Big Shame, Greek Tragedy, Goose-Pimples, Ecstasy, and Abigail's Party.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity.

Mike Leigh

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.

Mike Leigh

You will find hardly any improvising on camera anywhere in my films. It's very structured, but it's all worked out from elaborate improvisations over a long period, as you know.

Mike Leigh

Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.

Mike Leigh

Given the events of even the 19th century, Zionism was inevitable. Given the events of the 20th century, Israel was inevitable.

Mike Leigh

But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.

Mike Leigh

I've walked out of films. But for every film I've ever walked out of, I've probably walked out of 500 plays.

Mike Leigh

But films should be voyeuristic. What else is a film if you're not snooping into somebody else's lives?

Mike Leigh

I feel very much ideologically, politically if you like, and emotionally part of the European cinema.

Mike Leigh

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.

Mike Leigh

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

Mike Leigh

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.

Mike Leigh

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.

Mike Leigh

There are plenty of bad actors and there are plenty of bad directors. There are actors who will always be bad and there are good actors who you cry for because they're being badly directed or the material isn't good enough.

Mike Leigh

I think Michael Caine is a perfectly good actor but it's obvious he's not going to be in one of my films.

Mike Leigh

My work requires acting at its most committed - it demands actors of enormous resilience, but also intelligence and wit. It doesn't work for narcissistic or selfish actors.

Mike Leigh

There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things.

Mike Leigh

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.

Mike Leigh

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.

Mike Leigh

I mean, artistic processes are all about making choices all the time, and the very act of making a choice is the distilling down and the getting to the core of what it is that you care about and what you want to say, really.

Mike Leigh

Author Bio

  • NameMike Leigh
  • DescriptionBritish writer and director of film and theatre
  • BornFebruary 20, 1943
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionFilm Director; Actor; Playwright; Theatre Director; Screenwriter; Author
  • AwardsOfficer Of The Order Of The British Empire