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The main problem is that the Hollywood system has already made the film before the director shoots a single frame.

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
System
Shoots
Film
Frame
Problem
Director
Made
Main
Directors
Hollywood
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Already

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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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Resolve was never stronger than in the morning, after the night, when it was never weaker
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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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Independent filmmaking has always been there and it's not to be forgotten.
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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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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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Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.
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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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There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things.
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I am very happy to be part of European and world cinema as a British filmmaker.
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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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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.
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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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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'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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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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There have always been and there always will be the peripheral sideline activities which are a form of entertainment, which is to say you pay a couple of cents and you see something freakish. That is what reality TV is.
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