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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.

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
Everyone
Stopped
Important
Presses
Long
Press
Ultimately
Integrity
Worry
Greatest
Portrayed
Since
Worrying

More quotes by Mike Leigh

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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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Independent filmmaking has always been there and it's not to be forgotten.
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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.
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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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The problem with the British film industry is the nervousness and insecurity about - and genuflection toward - Los Angeles.
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I discover what my film is by embarking on the journey of making it.
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I don't know what the character is going to be. We sit down and we create a character, and all of the characters in all of my films are made like that.
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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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As a general habit and general tendency, I prefer not to bog a piece down with a great number of transitory, contemporary references, because in the end, I'm concerned, not in an abstract way, but an actual way, with creating a world which has a universality to it - even though what goes on is made up of texture and detail, contemporary detail.
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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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The main problem is that the Hollywood system has already made the film before the director shoots a single frame.
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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.
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I am very happy to be part of European and world cinema as a British filmmaker.
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One of the reasons the whole Hollywood way of making films wouldn't work for me is because the way I operate would be anathema to anyone who wants to hold a job down in Beverly Hills.
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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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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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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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But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.
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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.
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The kind of acting that's wholly literary or cerebral is wrong. It's useless for me to have actors so much in their heads that they can't be organic.
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