Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mike Leigh
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 20
Actor
Author
Film Director
Playwright
Screenwriter
Television Director
Theatrical Director
Writer
Create
Film
Character
Going
Made
Like
Films
Characters

More quotes by Mike Leigh

Image
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
Image
Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity.
Mike Leigh
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The problem with the British film industry is the nervousness and insecurity about - and genuflection toward - Los Angeles.
Mike Leigh
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I am very happy to be part of European and world cinema as a British filmmaker.
Mike Leigh
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Given the events of even the 19th century, Zionism was inevitable. Given the events of the 20th century, Israel was inevitable.
Mike Leigh
Image
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
Image
Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.
Mike Leigh
Image
Resolve was never stronger than in the morning, after the night, when it was never weaker
Mike Leigh
Image
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