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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
Author
Film Director
Playwright
Screenwriter
Television Director
Theatrical Director
Writer
Films
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Create
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More quotes by Mike Leigh

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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.
Mike Leigh
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Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.
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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The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They're able to fly.
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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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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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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I think the camera has got to be motivated. You can't have things arrived at gratuitously. Everything has to have an organic function, but the more comfortable I've become and the more imaginative and sophisticated and the more exploratory I've become at the medium, the more I've subtly deviated away from that in various ways.
Mike Leigh
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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.
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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I discover what my film is by embarking on the journey of making it.
Mike Leigh
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The problem with the British film industry is the nervousness and insecurity about - and genuflection toward - Los Angeles.
Mike Leigh
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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.
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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It creeps up on you and becomes an obsession. It comes out of watching a million movies.
Mike Leigh
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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.
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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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
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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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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