Mike Leigh Quotes

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.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.

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.

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.

But films should be voyeuristic. What else is a film if you’re not snooping into somebody else’s lives?

There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things.

I discover what my film is by embarking on the journey of making it.

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.

I feel very much ideologically, politically if you like, and emotionally part of the European cinema.

The good thing from my perspective is that nobody puts any pressure on me to say what it's going to be. The backers accept that they don't know what they are going to get.

Given the events of even the 19th century, Zionism was inevitable. Given the events of the 20th century, Israel was inevitable.

It's an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it, and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That's just rubbish, basically.

The way an actor is trained doesn't ultimately have much bearing on my work. I'm interested in the actor as artist.

It creeps up on you and becomes an obsession. It comes out of watching a million movies.

Some of my favorite movies are Hollywood movies. Hollywood is part of the cinematic spectrum. I nurture a healthy love-hate relationship with Hollywood.

I think Michael Caine is a perfectly good actor but it's obvious he's not going to be in one of my films.

My work requires acting at its most committed - it demands actors of enormous resilience, but also intelligence and wit. It doesn't work for narcissistic or selfish actors.

I am very happy to be part of European and world cinema as a British filmmaker.

I take no notice of the trends. It has never concerned me at all. My job is to deal with what I want to deal with and reach an audience by doing so.

Films are made all over the world all the time and only a thin slice of that product is Hollywood.

I'm developing the stuff all the time. There's a film in my head. I'm imagining a film.

I've walked out of films. But for every film I've ever walked out of, I've probably walked out of 500 plays.

You will find hardly any improvising on camera anywhere in my films. It's very structured, but it's all worked out from elaborate improvisations over a long period, as you know.

But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.

Resolve was never stronger than in the morning, after the night, when it was never weaker

The problem with the British film industry is the nervousness and insecurity about - and genuflection toward - Los Angeles.

The delineation between the actor and his part is a practical matter. When the camera runs, you want the actor to be the character.

You can't make a movie about the artist without shooting outdoors.

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.

I have to get out of bed every day to make something happen.

I can't really see how anybody could be particularly optimistic about the future in general because we are destroying the planet.

The notion that acting is simply about intuitively responding to situations the way you feel couldn't be farther away from how I ask actors to work.

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.

There is a great tradition of independent filmmaking in the U.S. that I absolutely respect. There's some wonderful stuff that comes out in this country against all the odds.

Independent filmmaking has always been there and it's not to be forgotten.

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.

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.

The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They're able to fly.

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.

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.

In the first place, I'm pretty thorough about whom I choose. I instinctively look for the kind of actor who is going to be trusting. There are all kinds of insecure people out there called actors.

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

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.