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

Mike Leigh

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Mike Leigh
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 20
Actor
Author
Film Director
Playwright
Screenwriter
Television Director
Theatrical Director
Writer
Inevitable
Israel
Events
Century
Given
Even
Zionism

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I hope I make films where you walk away . . . with work to do, arguments to have, things to worry about, things to care about. In that sense, I would regard what I do as political.
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It's important to be true to the events, but the most important thing is to get to the essence of the experience. Not to be bogged down in an academic way by a notion of the truth. First of all, the truth is an illusive and spurious concept.
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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.
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When I was young I used to sit in the cinema thinking wouldn't it be great if you could have a film in which the characters were like real people instead of being like actors.
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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.
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If a film or any piece of work doesn't entertain, it fails - and that is using the word entertain literally, meaning it holds you there and you become absorbed by it so that you don't walk away and get bored and so on.
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But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.
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I'm old enough to have friends and contemporaries who have long since retired, and that's their prerogative - enough is enough it doesn't mean a thing to me. But I haven't got any money, so, you know, I just keep on working.
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The delineation between the actor and his part is a practical matter. When the camera runs, you want the actor to be the character.
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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.
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My job apart from anything else is to build an ensemble composed of actors who all come from a secure place so that they can all work together to make the film.
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I discover what my film is by embarking on the journey of making it.
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It creeps up on you and becomes an obsession. It comes out of watching a million movies.
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I think Michael Caine is a perfectly good actor but it's obvious he's not going to be in one of my films.
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The main problem is that the Hollywood system has already made the film before the director shoots a single frame.
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Very occasionally I hire an actor and get it wrong. The actor just doesn't trust the process or me as fully as I thought they would. In this case, you can be quite sure that if an actor is untrusting, it's got nothing to do with me or the process.
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The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They're able to fly.
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There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things.
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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.
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I can't negotiate and collaborate with a character to create a distilled dramatic investigation of the raw material. I need to work with an actor. That stuff about actors who stay in character all the time is nonsense.
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