Mike Leigh Quotes

Quotes about:

• I make films because I am endlessly fascinated by people. I'm fascinated immediately to know about the lives that are going on around me. That is what drives me. And that is because everybody matters, everybody is there to be cared about, everybody is interesting and everybody is the potential central character in a story. Judging people is not acceptable.

  Mike Leigh

  Character, Judging People, Interesting

  Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 7, 2010.

  16 Copy quote

• I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience. When you're meeting somebody for the first time, all you have to go on are your preconceptions and your stereotypes and whatever else, but gradually as you get to know them, they change. They become more three-dimensional, and you start to see them in layers.

  Mike Leigh

  Trying, Life Experience, Stereotype

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

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

  Mike Leigh

  Real, Trying, Life Experience

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. November 23, 2008.

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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

  Real, Character, Thinking

  Source: bigthink.com

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Worry, Political, Care

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Essence, Important, Events

  "Mike Leigh, Unscripted". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 21, 2014.

  10 Copy quote

• 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. 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

  Generosity, Choices, Luck

  Source: www.avclub.com

  9 Copy quote

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

  Mike Leigh

  Journey, Film

  Source: www.avclub.com

  7 Copy quote

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

  Mike Leigh

  Film, Should, Snooping

  "The Auteur, The Voyeur: Mike Leigh Talks". Interview with Durga Chew-Bose, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 8, 2010.

  9 Copy quote

• When it comes to thinking about how a character talks, there are literary and language considerations. For actors to be able to differentiate between themselves and the characters they are playing while at the same time remain in character and spontaneous requires a sophisticated combination of skills and spirit.

  Mike Leigh

  Character, Thinking, Skills

  Interiew with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Lucky, Our Relationship, Wonderful Experience

  "Mike Leigh: 'Creativity is a life-blood for people'". interview with Miranda Sawyer, www.theguardian.com. April 09, 2011.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Mean, Choices, Care

  9 Copy quote

• For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It's about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact.

  Mike Leigh

  Mean, Artist, Journey

  "Big Think Interview With Mike Leigh". Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 7, 2010.

  9 Copy quote

• The whole thing about making films in an organic film on location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across.

  Mike Leigh

  Character, Location, Spirit

  "Mike Leigh at the NFT". Interview with Derek Malcolm, www.theguardian.com. October 7, 2002.

  19 Copy quote

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

  Mike Leigh

  Eye, Choices, Hollywood

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Insecure, Acting, Needs

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

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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

  Directors, Actors, Cry

  "Mike Leigh: 'Creativity is a life-blood for people'". Interview with Miranda Sawyer, www.theguardian.com. April 9, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Mike Leigh

  Directors, Hollywood, Problem

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Insecure, People, Looks

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Jobs, Working Together, Ensemble

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

  4 Copy 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

  Character, Film

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• I do not make films which are prescriptive, and I do not make films that are conclusive. You do not walk out of my films with a clear feeling about what is right and wrong. They're ambivalent. You walk away with work to do. My films are a sort of investigation. They ask questions . . .. Sometimes I hear that some [Hollywood] studio is interested in me. Then they discover that this is the guy who works with no script, that there is no casting discussion, no interference, that I have the final cut, and that does it.

  Mike Leigh

  Cutting, Guy, Feelings

  4 Copy quote

• I really think people are greatly stimulated and enriched by experiencing in film just as we can from novels and other art, experiencing things that resonate with what our lives are about. I think people really want to know... want to share, want to have the stimulus to think and care about the way they live their lives, the way they relate to other people, their aspirations, their hopes, et cetera.

  Mike Leigh

  Art, Thinking, People

  "What Hitchcock Got Wrong". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

  4 Copy quote

• I know, that trends and all of those things and formulae that calculate what audiences want to see and what audiences don't want to see and various other demographic demarcations are the eccentric and ludicrous prerogative of Hollywood studios. But out there in the real world - by which I mean the rest of the world where we make truthful organic films, independent films unimpeded by interference - it's not about all those sort of calculating what is commercial. It's about wanting to say things and saying them in a way that will get through to people.

  Mike Leigh

  Real, Mean, Independent

  "Big Think Interview With Mike Leigh". Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 7, 2010.

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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

  Thinking, Sophisticated, Motivated

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

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