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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.

Mike Leigh

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Mike Leigh
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 20
Actor
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Film Director
Playwright
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Television Director
Theatrical Director
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More quotes by Mike Leigh

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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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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
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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.
Mike Leigh
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I am very happy to be part of European and world cinema as a British filmmaker.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh
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Resolve was never stronger than in the morning, after the night, when it was never weaker
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh
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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.
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.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh
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But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh
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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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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.
Mike Leigh